Mako Speaks on Panel on Protests in Iraq and Lebanon
Shamiran Mako, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, spoke as part of a November 20, 2019 panel on the recent protests in Lebanon and Iraq hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Middle East Initiative.
The panel, entitled “Understanding the Protests in Lebanon and Iraq: Why Now?” also featured Marsin Alshamary, Research Fellow at the Middle East Initiative and PhD Candidate in Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jeffrey G. Karam, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Lebanese American University and Associate at the Middle East Initiative; and Christiana Parreira, Research Fellow at the Middle East Initiative and PhD Candidate in Political Science at Stanford University.
Shamiran Mako’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics with a focus on authoritarianism, civil wars, democratization, institutional capacity building, governing in divided societies, and American foreign policy with a regional interest on the Middle East and North Africa. Specifically, she explores the historical and contemporary drivers of inter and intra-state conflicts that produce weak and fragile states and examines ways in which successful conflict mitigating strategies relating to post-conflict state and peacebuilding can be applied to states in the MENA region.