Killian Clarke
Assistant Professor
I am a political scientist who studies the origins and consequences of grassroots mobilization and protests, and their contribution to transformative political events like revolutions, regime change, and democratization. Most of my research focuses on the Middle East and North Africa.
I am currently writing a book on counterrevolutions, which explains why some revolutionary governments are toppled by counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable and long-lasting regimes. I analyze the case of Egypt's 2011 revolution and 2013 counterrevolution, using a combination of interview and protest data, and I compare Egypt's trajectory to those of other revolutionary governments with an original dataset of counterrevolutions since 1900. The project was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.
In my broader research I examine other instances of protest and regime change in the Middle East and beyond. I have written about the dynamics of mobilization in the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011, with several pieces that focus on Egypt's experience. I have also studied practices of resistance among Syrian refugee communities that were displaced during the civil war. In newer work I am researching the sources of post-revolutionary order and regime-building, and examining the recent 2019 uprisings in Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria, and Sudan.
My work has been published in a number of forums including American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Journal of Peace Research, Perspectives on Politics, and Comparative Politics. I received my PhD from Princeton University’s Department of Politics, and also hold an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center and a BA from Harvard University. From 2020 to 2021 I was a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow with the Weatherhead Scholars Program at Harvard University.
You can find more information about me and my work at my personal website.