Democratic Backsliding in Tunisia

Date: 

Thursday, September 8, 2022, 4:30pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA 02138

The WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar is pleased to present

Sharan Grewal
Assistant Professor, Department of Government, College of William and Mary

Discussant: William Granara, Research Professor of the Practice of Arabic on the Gordon Gray Endowment, Harvard University

Sharan Grewal is an Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary,  a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy. He received a PhD in Politics from Princeton University in 2018. His research examines democratization, security studies, and political Islam in the Arab world, especially Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Sudan. 

Broadly speaking, his work examines when and why security forces and Islamist movements undermine transitions to democracy. In this endeavor, he combines deep area knowledge, extensive interviews, and years of fieldwork with innovative quantitative methodologies, including ideal point analyses of parliamentary votes, targeted surveys of military personnel, and geospatial analyses. He is a member of the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network.

Sharan’s work has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Democratization, Security Studies, and Middle East Journal. His first book is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2023. He has also written for Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Brookings, and Carnegie, among others.

Sharan has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, AP, AFP, Al-Jazeera, Al-Monitor, Al-Ahram, The Times, The Telegraph, The National, Middle East Eye, Middle East Monitor, and TRT World, among others.

Co-sponsors: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Contact: Liz Flanagan