2010-2011 Postd octoral Fellow

Dr. Debra Shushan

Dr. Debra Shushan comes to CIRS from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she is an Assistant Professor of Government and member of the faculties of International Relations and Middle East Studies. The focus of her research is the foreign policies of Middle East states. After receiving a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in Government from Harvard University, Dr. Shushan went on to earn an MPhil in International Relations from Oxford University, and an MA, MPhil, and PhD in Political Science from Yale University. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and recipient of the Marshall Scholarship, the Truman Scholarship, and the Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Shushan’s work (with Chris Marcoux) on foreign aid by Arab states has garnered attention, with synopses of their findings published on the website of Foreign Policy and forthcoming in Norrag News.

While at CIRS, Dr. Shushan is writing a book manuscript on the factors influencing foreign policy-making in autocratic regimes. The book is an empirical analysis of the foreign policies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria during the 1990-91 and 2003+ Gulf wars. In addition, she is conducting research on Qatari foreign aid within the context of its broader foreign policy agenda. Read Shushan’s article on “The Female Face of Qatar’s Municipal Elections”