Professor Melani Cammett will discuss her research program on identity politics and development and her approach to conducting fieldwork across the Middle East. The discussion will focus on the how she arrived at the topics at the center of her research, her choice of research methodologies, and perspectives on publishing her research. There will be substantial time for questions from the audience to address their specific concerns about research design, survey instrument design, interviewing, research ethics, and the publication process, among other issues.

Melani Cammett is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government, Chair of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and Acting Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She also holds a secondary faculty appointment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Cammett's books include Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon (Cornell University Press, 2014), which won the American Political Science Association (APSA) Giovanni Sartori Book Award and the Honorable Mention for the APSA Gregory Luebbert Book Award; A Political Economy of the Middle East (co-authored with Ishac Diwan, Alan Richards, and John Waterbury, Westview Press, 2015); The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare in the Global South (co-edited with Lauren Morris MacLean, Cornell University Press, 2014), which received the Honorable Mention for the ARNOVA book award; and Globalization and Business Politics in North Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Her current research explores peace and reconciliation after ethnoreligious conflict, the politics of social service delivery, and the historical roots of economic and social development, primarily in the Middle East. Cammett has published numerous articles in academic and policy journals, consults for development policy organizations, and is the recipient of various fellowships and awards. She currently serves as a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Syria.

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Duration: 50:14