Sharan Grewal

Sharan Grewal was a residential research fellow with the Middle East Initiative for the 2023-2024 academic year. He is also Assistant Professor of Government at American University and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was previously assistant professor at William & Mary. He received a PhD in Politics from Princeton University in 2018. 

Sharan’s research examines revolutions and democratic transitions, particularly in the Arab world. His first book, Soldiers of Democracy? (Oxford University Press, 2023), explores the conditions under which militaries support or thwart democratic transitions. It received APSA’s Best Book in MENA Politics Award and the Robert Jervis Best International Security Book Award.  Sharan’s work has also been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and British Journal of Political Science, among other journals. These pieces have won Best Paper and Article Awards from APSA MENA and APSA’s Democracy & Autocracy section, as well as the Perry World House-Foreign Affairs Emerging Scholars Prize.

Sharan’s research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. He writes regularly for Brookings, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, POMED, and the Carnegie Endowment, and has been interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters, among others.