As part of the Spring 2025 Seminars on Elections, the Clough Center welcomes Marsin Alshamary, a Political Science professor at Boston College. Professor Alshamary will explore Iraq’s political landscape, with a particular focus on elections—especially the upcoming parliamentary elections in October 2025. The seminar will be held on Tuesday, March 11, from 12:00 PM to 1:15 PM at 10 Stone Avenue. Attendance is by invitation only.

Professor Alshamary earned her PhD in Political Science from MIT in 2020. Marsin Alshamary is a scholar of Middle Eastern politics with a primary focus on religious institutions, civil society, and protest movements. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled: A Century of the Iraqi Hawza: How Clerics Shaped Protests and Politics in Modern Day Iraq, which explores the historical and contemporary interactions between the Shi’a religious establishment and protest movements.

Her research has been published in academic journals, including The Journal of Democracy, and she has provided commentary to various media outlets such as Agence France-Presse, Al Jazeera, BBC, The Associated Press, Vox Media, The Washington Post, and Reuters. Alshamary has also consulted for organizations like the United Nations, USAID, and the World Bank.

As an educator, she teaches courses on religion and the state in the Middle East, state building and revolution in the Middle East, and civil society and democracy. She is a faculty associate in the Islamic Civilization and Societies Program at Boston College. She is also a research affiliate with the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School and a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution. She holds a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Marsin Alshamary’s work is driven by a commitment to understanding the Middle East’s complexities and contributing to informed discussions in both academic and public spheres.