MENA Award Recipients
Best MENA Politics APSA Paper
Best Dissertation
Best Book on MENA Politics
Best Book on MENA Politics (Senior)
Best Book on MENA Politics (Junior)
Best Article on MENA Politics
Best Fieldwork
Best Original Dataset
Best MENA Politics APSA Paper
APSA MENA Politics Section Award for Best APSA Paper. Awarded for the best paper presented at the previous meeting.
| 2025 | Berfin Baydar, Duke University and Asli Cansunar, University of Washington “Homogenizing High Street: Economic Cleansing of Minority Elites through Fiscal Discrimination.” |
| 2025 | Honorable Mention Motasem Abuzaid, University of Oxford and Kevin Mazur, King’s College London “Homogenizing High Street: Economic Cleansing of Minority Elites through Fiscal Discrimination.” |
| 2024 | Elizabeth K. Parker-Magyar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Workplace Networks and Civil Society in Autocracies: Evidence from Jordan.” |
| 2023 | Basileus Zeno, York University “The Shifting Rhetorics of the Syrian Uprising: Politics of Sectarianization.” Presented at 2022 APSA Annual Meeting. |
| 2023 | Allison Spencer Hartnett, University of Southern California “Rural Intra-Elite Conflict, Colonization, and Demands for Power-Sharing: Evidence from Khedival Egypt.” Presented at 2022 APSA Annual Meeting. |
| 2023 | Mohamed Saleh, London School of Economics “Rural Intra-Elite Conflict, Colonization, and Demands for Power-Sharing: Evidence from Khedival Egypt.” Presented at 2022 APSA Annual Meeting. |
| 2021 | Tugba Bozcaga, Harvard University “Imams and Businessmen- Islamist Service Provision in Turkey.” |
| 2021 | Fotini Christia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Imams and Businessmen- Islamist Service Provision in Turkey.” |
| 2020 | Tugba Bozcaga, MIT “The Social Bureaucrat” |
Best Dissertation
APSA MENA Politics Section Award for Best Dissertation.
| 2025 | Elizabeth K. Parker-Magyar, Yale University “Workplace Networks and Autonomous Organizations in Contemporary Jordan.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2024. |
| 2025 | Honorable Mention Rosa Burç, German Center for Integration and Migration Research “Building a Society: Kurdish Transformative Mobilization in Times of Violence.” Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy. |
| 2025 | Honorable Mention Waleed K. Salem, University of Washington “Seeing Like a Court: Judicial Agency in Autocratic Regimes and Transition Politics: The Case of Egypt.” |
| 2024 | Hessa Alnuaimi, University of St. Andrews “The Legitimation of the Arab Gulf States through British Colonial Racialisation of Arabs and South Asians.” |
| 2024 | Alice Baroni, Graduate Institute of International and Development Sudies “Imperfect Struggles: Jewish-Israeli Activists for Palestinian Rights and the Paradoxes of Solidarity from a Position of Power.” |
| 2023 | Carolyn Barnett, University of Arizona “Perceived Norms and the Politics of Women’s Rights in Morocco.” Princeton University. |
| 2023 | Honorable Mention Daniel Tavana, Pennsylvania State University “The Origins of Opposition: Elections, Identity, and Order in the Middle East.” Princeton University. |
| 2023 | Honorable Mention Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed, Stanford University “Religious cycles of policy responsiveness: How religious seasons regulate public opinion and government responsiveness in the Muslim World.” Columbia University. |
| 2022 | Jannis Grimm, Freie Universität Berlin “Contesting Legitimacy: Protest and the Politics of Signification in Post-Revolutionary Egypt,” Freie Universität Berlin, 2019. |
| 2022 | Honorable Mention Steven Schaaf, University of Mississippi “Litigating the Authoritarian State: Lawful Resistance and Judicial Politics in the Middle East” George Washington University, 2021 |
| 2021 | Lillian Frost, Virginia Tech University “Ambiguous Citizenship: Protracted Refugees and the State in Jordan.” |
| 2021 | Honorable Mention Scott Williamson, Bocconi University “The King Can Do No Wrong: Delegation and Blame Under Authoritarian Rule.” |
| 2020 | Stephen Monroe, Princeton University “Varieties of Protection: Ethnic Politics and Resistance to Neoliberalism in the Arab World.” |
Best Book on MENA Politics
| 2025 | Best First Book Diana Greenwald, City College of New York Mayors in the Middle: Indirect Rule and Local Government in Occupied Palestine. Columbia University Press, 2024. |
| 2025 | Best Book by a Senior Scholar Güneş Murat Tezcür, Arizona State University Liminal Minorities: Religious Difference and Mass Violence in Muslim Societies. Cornell University Press, 2024. |
| 2025 | Honorable Mention, Best First Book Rachel Brown, Washington University in St. Louis Unsettled Labors: Migrant Care Work in. Duke University Press, 2024. |
| 2024 | Sharan Grewal, American University Soldiers of Democracy? Military Legacies and the Arab Spring. Oxford University Press, 2023. |
| 2023 | David Patel, Brandeis University Order Out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq. Cornell University Press. 2022. |
| 2023 | Honorable Mention Sarah E. Parkinson, Johns Hopkins University Beyond the Lines: Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organization in Wartime Lebanon. Cornell University Press. 2023. |
| 2020 | Steven Brooke, University of Wisconsin Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the Islamist Political Advantage. (Cornell University Press, 2019). |
Best Book on MENA Politics (Senior)
| 2022 | Mona El-Ghobashy, New York University Bread and Freedom: Egypt’s Revolutionary Situation. Stanford University Press, 2021 |
| 2020 | Khalid Mustafa Medani, McGill University Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa. Cambridge University Press, 2021 |
Best Book on MENA Politics (Junior)
APSA MENA Politics Section Award for Best Book Awarded for the best book published in the previous two years. Work utilizing any methodological, theoretical, and empirical tools for the study of the politics of the Middle East and North Africa will be considered.
| 2022 | Avital Livny, University of Illinois Trust and the Islamic Advantage: Religious-Based Movements in Turkey and the Muslim World. Cambridge University Press, 2020 |
| 2022 | Raphael Lefevre, University of Oxford Jihad in the City: Militant Islam and Contentious Politics in Tripoli. Cambridge University Press, 2021 |
| 2021 | Noora Lori, Boston University Offshore Citizens: Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf. Cambridge University Press, 2019. |
| 2020 | Lisa Wedeen, University of Chicago Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria. University of Chicago Press, 2019 |
Best Article on MENA Politics
Award for the best article on MENA Politics published in the previous year.
| 2025 | Fiona Adamson, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) “The Political Geography of Globalized Civil Wars: Networked Actors and Multi-Scalar Strategies in the Kurdish Conflict Assemblage.” International Studies Quarterly 68(1): 1-12. 2024. |
| 2025 | Honorable Mention Christopher Barrie, New York University Killian Clarke, Georgetown University Neil Ketchley, University of Oxford “Burnings, Beatings, and Bombings: Disaggregating Anti-Christian Violence in Egypt, 2013–2018.” Perspectives on Politics 22(2): 481-500. 2024. |
| 2025 | Honorable Mention Neil Ketchley, University of Oxford Ferdinand Eibl, King’s College London Jeroen Gunning, King’s College London “Anti-Austerity Riots in Late Developing States: Evidence from the 1977 Egyptian Bread Intifada.” Journal of Peace Research 61(6): 952-966. 2024. |
| 2024 | Daniel Arnon, University of Arizona Richard J. McAlexander, University of Pennsylvania Michael A. Rubin, University of Connecticut “Social Cohesion and Community Displacement in Armed Conflict.” International Security (2023) 47 (3): 52-94. |
| 2023 | Alsi Cansunar, University of Washington “Distributional Consequences of Philanthropic Contributions to Public Goods: Self-Serving Elite in Ottoman Istanbul.” Journal of Politics 84 (2): 889-907. |
| 2023 | Honorable Mention Michelle Weitzel, Geneva Graduate Institute “Access Denied: Temporal Mobility Regimes in Hebron.” Borderlands Journal 21, no. 1 (January 1, 2022): 171–200. |
| 2022 | Sarah Parkinson, Johns Hopkins “(Dis)courtesy Bias: ‘Methodological Cognates,’ Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research.” Comparative Political Studies 55, no. 3 (2021): 420-450. |
| 2022 | Honorable Mention Lisel Hintz, Johns Hopkins “The Empire’s Opposition Strikes Back: Popular Culture as Creative Resistance Tool under Turkey’s AKP” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 48, no. 1 (2021): 24-43. |
| 2021 | Max Gallien, University of Sussex “Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa.” Perspectives on Politics. |
| 2021 | Rich Nielsen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “The Case of Female Salafi Preachers.” American Journal of Political Science. |
Best Field Work
| 2022 | Dina Bishara, Cornell University “The Generative Power of Protest: Time and Space in Contentious Politics” Comparative Political Studies 54, no. 10 (2021): 1722-1756. |
Best Original Dataset
| 2022 | Neil Ketchley “Unpopular protest: Mass mobilization and attitudes to democracy in post-Mubarak Egypt,” Journal of Politics 83, no. 1 (2022): 291-305. |
| 2022 | Thoraya El-Rayyes “Unpopular protest: Mass mobilization and attitudes to democracy in post-Mubarak Egypt,” Journal of Politics 83, no. 1 (2022): 291-305. |