Contributors

Melani Cammett

Associate Professor
Department of Political Science, Brown University

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Professor Cammett is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Brown University and specializes in the political economy of development and the Middle East.  She earned her Ph.D. in 2002 from the Department of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley and served as an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies from 2005-2006 and 2007-2008.  Cammett's current book project, tentatively entitled In the Service of Sectarianism: Welfare and Politics in Weak States, explores the dynamics of sectarianism, focusing on how ethnic and religious parties allocate welfare goods.  Based on extensive field research, the book compares the conditions under which sectarian parties in Lebanon target members of other religious groups and marginal supporters, and includes brief supplementary case studies of Hamas in Palestine, the Sadrist Movement in Iraq, and the Bharatiya Janata Party in India.  She is also initiating a new research project on the politics of public health in the Middle East. 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 scholarly articles in World Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, Comparative Politics, World Development, Global Governance and other journals.  Her research has received support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, U.S. Institute of Peace, Social Science Research Council, and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, the Global Public Health Initiative at Brown University, the Salomon Faculty Research Grant at Brown, and the Institute for International Studies at U.C. Berkeley.  Cammett also holds an M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1994), received a Fulbright Fellowship in Jordan, and has consulted for development policy organizations.