Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an associate professor at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM). He is an adjunct faculty at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, and a visiting faculty at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. He obtained his doctorate in Modern History at University of Oxford, completing a thesis on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, his MA from Georgetown University, and his BA from UCLA. His research focuses on 20th century Iraq, particularly regime resilience, civil-military relations, and state-sponsored violence during the Ba'athist-era from 1968 to 2003. He has researched the formation of the post-Baathist Iraqi state and the evolution of ISIS since its earliest incarnations during the Iraqi insurgency in 2003. He is co-author of Iraq's Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008), and The Modern History of Iraq, with Phebe Marr (Westview 2016). Ibrahim is an Iraqi-American who lived in Yemen, Turkey, and Spain and has travelled to 53 countries, including the Middle East, the Balkans, East Africa, and South Asia.