Seteney Shami

Seteney Shami is an anthropologist from Jordan with degrees from the
American University in Beirut and U.C. Berkeley. After teaching at Yarmouk
University in Jordan and setting up a graduate department of anthropology,
she moved to the regional office of the Population Council in Cairo as
director of the Middle East Awards in Population and the Social Sciences
(MEAwards). She then joined the Social Science Research Council in New York
as program director for the program on the Middle East and North Africa, the
program on Eurasia and the InterAsia Program. Since 2012, she is also the
Founding Director of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, a regional
organization headquartered in Beirut.
She has been a visiting Professor at U.C. Berkeley, Georgetown University,
University of Chicago, Stockholm University and the Swedish Collegium for
Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (Uppsala). She has conducted fieldwork
in Jordan, Turkey and in the North Caucasus. Her research interests center
on issues of ethnicity and nationalism in the context of globalization,
urban politics and state-building strategies, and population displacement
and trans-national movements.