Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world
A conversation with Melani Cammett, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Brown University
Melani Cammett is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Brown University. She specializes in the political economy of development and the Middle East and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on comparative politics, development, and Middle East politics. Her first book, Globalization and Business Politics in North Africa: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2007) examines how integration in global manufacturing chains reshapes business politics in developing countries. She has published articles in Comparative Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Studies in Comparative International Development, World Development, World Politics, and other scholarly journals. Cammett’s second book, “Compassionate Communalism? Welfare and Sectarianism in the Middle East,” explores the politics of social welfare provision by sectarian and Islamist organizations. The research is based largely on organizations in Lebanon with additional case studies of organizations in Iraq, Palestine and India. An article based on this research won the 2011 Alexander L. George Award from the Qualitative and Multi-Methods Research Section of the American Political Science Association. She is currently completing a co-edited volume, The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare in the Global South, and has new research projects on public health and Islamist governance in the Middle East. Cammett holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and serves as a consultant on politics and economic development in the Middle East.