CAIRO (AP) — Adam Schreck, who has covered conflict and upheaval in the Middle East as well as sweeping economic changes reshaping the region, has been named Gulf News Director for The Associated Press.

The appointment was announced Wednesday by AP's Middle East News Director Ian Phillips.

From his base in Dubai, Schreck will lead a team of video journalists, text reporters and photographers in a region comprising of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar. He will also have oversight over AP's news operation in Iran.

AP has invested heavily in the Middle East region in the last two years, with particular emphasis on the growing video market. In 2014, a premium service — "Middle East Extra" — was launched to meet demand for more in-depth regional coverage for broadcast and digital customers. Schreck will oversee video journalists and freelancers working for that service.

"The Gulf region is changing in multiple ways, developing economically, socially and militarily," said Phillips, who is in charge of AP's text, video and photo operation across the Middle East. "It's also in the midst of a generational swing that could challenge the status quo - and Schreck's team will seek to capture all of this."

Schreck, 39, has filed stories from more than a dozen countries, as well as from U.S. Navy ships on patrol in the Persian Gulf. His assignments have included the Libyan civil war and the NATO-led aerial bombardment, the Afghanistan conflict and the 2013 terror attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya.

He joined AP's business news desk in New York in 2007, covering energy, airlines and corporate news. A year later, he was named as a correspondent in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, responsible for business news coverage across the Gulf region.

In 2012, he was appointed bureau chief in Iraq. After returning to Dubai, he helped coordinate coverage of the Islamic State group's takeover of a third of Iraq in 2014.

During his time in the Gulf, Schreck has reported on the growing influence of the region's airlines and multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds, as well as mounting concerns about Dubai's economy around its 2009 financial crisis. He has covered OPEC meetings in Africa, the opening of the world's tallest skyscraper, a 2010 package-bomb terror plot and, from the sultanate of Oman, the release of an American hiker held in an Iranian prison.

A native of Bourbonnais, Illinois, Schreck graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 1998 and earned a master's degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 2007. He is the recipient of the school's 2006 Atwater Prize, awarded in part for his reporting work from Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina.

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