Assistant professor of political science, Boston College
Religion and politics in the Shia Middle East, civil society and protest, women's political participation, domestic Iraqi politics, foreign relations in the Middle East and North Africa
Marsin Alshamary is a research fellow at the Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs with the Harvard Kennedy School, where she is working on her book project: “A Century of the Iraqi Hawza: How Clerics Shaped Protests and Politics in Modern Day Iraq”.
Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral research fellow with the Center for Middle East Politics at the Brookings Institution. Her research examines the intersection of religion and politics in the Middle East, looking particularly at how the Shi’a religious establishment in Iraq has intervened in formal politics, protest, and peacebuilding. She is also interested in the evolution of civil society in post-2003 Iraq and has written various reports on the topic. She has contributed opinion pieces to various outlets including 1001 Iraqi Thoughts, The Washington Post, War on the Rocks and PRI’s The World.
Alshamary holds a PhD in political science from MIT and a BA in International Relations and French from Wellesley College.
