Melani Cammett

Advisory Board Member

Melani Cammett is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government and Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Her research explores ethnic politics, conflict, development, and authoritarianism in the Middle East and other contexts. She is currently working on a book about how people live together after violence, focusing on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland.

Cammett’s books include The Oxford Handbook on Politics in Muslim Societies (co-edited with Pauline Jones, Oxford University Press, 2022), Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon (Cornell University Press 2014), which won the American Political Science Association (APSA) Giovanni Sartori Book Award and the Honorable Mention for the APSA Gregory Luebbert Book Award; A Political Economy of the Middle East (co-authored with Ishac Diwan, Alan Richards, and John Waterbury, 2015); The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare in the Global South (co-edited with Lauren Morris MacLean, Cornell University Press 2014), which received the Honorable Mention for the ARNOVA book award; and Globalization and Business Politics in North Africa (Cambridge University Press 2007). A new edition of A Political Economy of the Middle East is forthcoming (expected 2025).

Cammett has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed academic journals and policy outlets, consults for development policy organizations, and is the recipient of various fellowships and awards.

Cammett holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a B.A. from Brown University. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on comparative politics, the political economy of development, ethnic politics, research design, and Middle East politics.

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