Nasir Almasri
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Peace and Justice Studies
Links
Nasir Almasri is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Peace & Justice Studies at Wellesley College. His research sits at the intersection of comparative politics, international security, and Middle East politics, with a focus on political violence, state-opposition conflict, and security institutions.
His book project, The Colonial Origins of Opposition: State Formation, Political Competition, and the Evolution of Radicalism, examines why some opposition movements radicalize while others do not. Comparing political movements in Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine across the colonial and postcolonial periods, the book argues that trajectories of radicalism are shaped by the interaction of historically formed opposition organizations and state institutions.
His broader research examines how international security projects reshape domestic politics and institutions. Current projects study the institutional legacies of the global War on Terror, counterterrorism and authoritarian legalism, and the ways political shocks produce moderation, fragmentation, and radicalization within opposition movements. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics, Contention, and PS: Political Science & Politics.
Nasir received his PhD in Political Science from MIT. He previously held appointments at Boston University, Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, and the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.
Education
- B.A., Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
- B.S., Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
- M.A., University of Chicago
- Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Current and upcoming courses
People Power in the Digital Age
PEAC310
This course explores politics at the level of everyday people, those who have no formal access to mechanisms of institutional power. How are social movements and digital activists transforming politics? How have ordinary people exercised power? How do digital technologies alter the strategies that people use to effect political change? What strategies remain the same, even in our digital age? What practices and problems accompany digital politics? Drawing on classic works of political anthropology, as well as more recent examples of transnational and digital activism, this course seeks to understand the deployment of power by everyday people, particularly focusing on Global South contexts.
(PEAC 310 and POL2 303 are cross-listed courses.)