Professor Lisa Wedeen FBA
- Fellow type
- International Fellow
- Year elected
- 2026
Summary
Lisa Wedeen received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Working at the intersection of political theory, comparative politics, and anthropology, Wedeen writes ethnographically and theoretically about authoritarian regimes, the politics of the Middle East, interpretative methods, and political ideology. She is the Mary R. Morton Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College and Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. She is also Associate Faculty in Anthropology.
Wedeen is the author of three critically acclaimed books: 'Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria' (1999; with a new preface, 2015); 'Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (2008); and Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria' (2019). The latter received four awards, including the American Political Science Association’s Charles Taylor Book Award (2020) and the Book Award for Innovation in Concepts and Methods from the International Political Science Association (2021).
Her many articles include 'Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science' (2002); 'Concepts and Commitments in the Study of Democracy' (2004); 'Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science' (2010); 'Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria' (2013); 'Scientific Knowledge, Liberalism, and Empire: American Political Science in the Modern Middle East' (2016); Foucault’s Emancipatory Contributions to Method, and Why We Still Need Ideology Critique (2024); and 'Forever Has Fallen: The End of Syria’s Assad' (2025). Wedeen is the recipient of the David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award and an NSF fellowship.
She also has three co-edited volumes: 'Conspiracy/Theory (2024); The Oxford Handbook of Engaged Methodological Pluralism' (interpretive methods section, 2024); and 'The Oxford Handbook of Cosmopolitanism' (2026). She is currently working on two book projects - one on revolutionary disappointment and recalibration and the other on interpretive methods.