About

Melani Cammett is the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government at Harvard University and chair of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds a secondary faculty appointment in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

She specializes in the politics of development, identity politics and the Middle East. Her current research focuses on governance and the politics of social service provision by public, private, and non-state actors, identity politics, and the historical influences of economic and social development with an empirical focus on the Middle East.

Cammett has written a number of academic journal articles and other publications and authored or co-authored several books. Her book Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon won the 2015 American Political Science Association Giovanni Sartori Book Award and Honorable Mention for the 2015 APSA Gregory Luebbert Book Award. She is co-editor of the Cambridge University Press Elements series on the Politics of Development.

She serves as a commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Syria and as a consultant for development policy organizations.

Cammett earned a BA from Brown University, an MA from Tufts University, and an MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.