Jillian Schwedler
Dr. Jillian Schwedler is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Crown Center at Brandeis University and was previously Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Dr. Schwedler’s research focuses on contentious politics and political geography, particularly concerning protests in urban and peri-urban settings. Her regional specialization is the Middle East, with special expertise in Jordan and Yemen. Her books include the award-winning Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (Cambridge 2006) and (with Laleh Khalili) Policing and Prisons in the Middle East (Columbia 2010). Her articles have appeared in World Politics, Comparative Politics, Middle East Policy, Middle East Report, Middle East Critique, Journal of Democracy, and Social Movement Studies, among many others. Her most recent books are the two-time award-winning Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent (Stanford University Press, 2022) and The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research since the Arab Uprisings, author and co-editor with Marc Lynch and Sean Yom (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Dr. Schwedler has held visiting professorships as the Center for Global and International Studies at the University of Salamanca, Spain (Spring 2020) and the Institute for Advance Study at the University of Bologna–Forlí (Fall 2023). She has been visiting scholar in residence at multiple research institutions, including the Sidi-Bou Said School of Critical Protest Studies (Tunisia), the New Jordan Research Center (Amman), and that Arab Archives Institute (Amman). Dr. Schwedler has given more than a hundred featured and keynote lectures in more than two dozen countries.
Dr. Schwedler’s work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Scholars Program (3 times), the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Overseas Research Centers, among others.
Dr. Schwedler has served as an elected member of the APSA Council, the governing board of the American Political Science Association, and as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) She is currently co-chair of the Editorial Committee and was former chair of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), publishers of the quarterly journal Middle East Report. She is co-director (with Dr. Laryssa Chomiak) of the Sidi Bou Said School of Critical Protest Studies in Tunisia.