Mark Tomass is a monetary economist, specializing in financial markets. In the past 30 years, he taught money and banking, international trade and finance, and economic systems in various business schools in the United States and Europe, where he also designed and accredited graduate and undergraduate business programs.

 

His research focuses on using the proper economic methodology for understanding monetary and financial crises, the working of economic systems, organized crime, and violent group conflict in the Middle East. His work on Assyrians focused on the Assyrian community of Aleppo, where he argued that the fragmentation of the Assyrian identity is a result of their fragmented social and economic infrastructure.

 

His 2016 book The Religious Roots of the Syrian Conflict: Remaking the Fertile Crescent formulates economic concepts to outline mechanisms by which conflicts of secular nature often mutate into conflicts among religious groups. In his 2017 (with Charles Webel) edited book Assessing the War on Terror: Western and Middle Eastern Perspectives, Tomass brings together internationally acclaimed scholars in the field of terrorism and pairs his background as an expert in both international economics and Middle Eastern history with his personal upbringing in Syria to add unique value and deliver an unspoken voice to the vital study of counter-terrorism. In The International Handbook of Group Violence (2020), Tomass contributes a chapter entitled Holy Terror: How Scriptures Legitimized Group Violence in the Middle East, where he argues that distinguishing between the motivation for terrorist activity must be a main component of devising solutions for it.