Layla Al-Zubaidi is the director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Middle East Office in Beirut, Lebanon. She has studied Ethnology, Middle Eastern Studies and Archaeology in Germany and the US, and holds a Masters degree from Freie Universität Berlin. She specialises in issues of development, culture and media, and has published the study «Walking a Tightrope: News Media and Freedom of Expression in the Arab Middle East».