Dr Pierret earned his PhD in Political and Social Sciences at Sciences Po Paris and the Catholic University of Louvain (2009), funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (Belgium). He received his License in Modern History from the University of Liège (2001), his MA in International Politics from the Free University of Brussels (2002), and his MA in Comparative Politics (Muslim world) from Sciences Po Paris (2003). He attended a year-long intensive advanced Arabic language course at the French Institute of Damascus (2003-4). In 2010, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University, Department of Near Eastern Studies. In 2011, he was a visiting fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin.