Mako Joins Steering Committee for POMEPS
Pardee Professor Shamiran Mako was appointed as a member of the Steering Committee for the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS). Mako brings a wealth of experience to her new role including a strong background in international relations of the Middle East, majorly focusing on the politics of state formation and colonial history, ethnic politics, and governance in divided societies.
Established to enhance the Middle East’s political science scholarship and its engagement with the broader academic discipline, public policy, and public, the POMEPS is a collaborative body comprising leading experts on the region from renowned universities and organizations. The aim of this institution is to seek innovative approaches to the region’s politics, support the research publications about the Middle East discourse, and advance tenured opportunities for political scientists specializing in the region. Simultaneously, POMEPS intends to productively contribute to the foreign policy and policy-making processes, so that the expertise and insights of the members can positively impact decisions related to the Middle East.
As a member of the POMEPS’s Steering Committee, Mako will be working alongside a proactive cohort of scholars with a comprehensive expertise on the Middle East issues while making key decisions about selections for all programs including virtual research workshop, junior scholar book workshop, TRE small grant program, and the annual conference. Likewise, she will help in organizing thematic workshops that are typically held at the member’s home institution and co-edit the POMEPS Studies volume.
Shamiran Mako is an assistant professor of international relations and political science at the Pardee School of Global Studies. Her scholarship dives deep into the historical and contemporary drivers of inter- and intra-state conflicts that engender weak and fragile states across the Middle East and North Africa region. She is the author of the upcoming book Structuring Exclusion: Institutions, Grievances, and Ethnic State Capture in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2025) and After the Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa, with Valentine Moghadam (Cambridge University Press, 2021). To read more about her work and accomplishments, visit her faculty profile.