Manal A. Jamal is Professor of Political Science at James Madison University. Her research interests include comparative democratization, social movements, conflict to peace and the political economy of transitions, and Middle East politics, including the Arab-Israeli conflict.
She is author of Promoting Democracy: The Force of Political Settlements in Uncertain Times (New York University Press, 2019), and her articles have appeared in Comparative Political Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, International Feminist Journal of Politics, International Migration Review, and International Studies Review, as well as in a number of edited volumes. She has contributed political and social commentary to Project Syndicate, the London Review of Books, Al-Jazeera, the Montréal Gazette, Al-Ahram Weekly, and the Palestine Chronicle, among others.
She has held research fellowship positions at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and at UC Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. During the late 1990s, she worked as a journalist and researcher in the Palestinian Territories. She has consulted for several organizations, including the United Nations Special Coordinators Office in the Occupied Territories and the UK’s IHS Jane’s. She also contributed to the feasibility studies that led to the establishment of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences. From 2010 to 2015 and from 2023 to the present, she has served as a member of the Middle East Studies Association’s Committee for Academic Freedom. Between 2012 and 2014, she was a member of the inaugural transitional board of directors of the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies.