HWS News
30 September 2020 • Faculty Philbrick Yadav: 2018-19 Kinghorn Fellow
For her outstanding scholarship and public engagement on the complex politics of the Middle East, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science Stacey Philbrick Yadav was named this year's recipient of the John R. and Florence B. Kinghorn Global Fellowship.
Established in 1970 and generously endowed by Dr. and Mrs. William Reckmeyer in honor of John Readie and Florence B. Kinghorn, the fellowship honors outstanding faculty at HWS who have exemplified global citizenship on a continued basis.
An expert in Middle East politics with a particular focus on Yemen, Philbrick Yadav will receive a stipend of $3,000 to be used in the spirit and nature of the award.
"In her work as an educator and scholar, Professor Philbrick Yadav has consistently demonstrated profound engagement with pressing international challenges that grounds our global education philosophy," says Interim President Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. '12. "The Kinghorn Global Fellowship is both a well-earned recognition and a way to magnify the urgent observations, analysis and solutions her work offers."
During her appointment period, Philbrick Yadav will deliver the Kinghorn Global Fellow Lecture. Determined by the Kinghorn Global Fellow, the lecture topic must be connected to global citizenship and reflective of the work done to qualify for the award. The lecture will be open to the HWS and Geneva communities.
Hobart Dean Khuram Hussain, who nominated Philbrick Yadav for the fellowship, says that "Stacey's public lectures contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex and shifting relationships between non-Islamist and Islamist organizations in a way that brings light to highly obscured and simplified political communities. Our campus and community are better for her work and her contribution to public discourse at the Colleges are illuminating and necessary."
Read more about the Kinghorn Fellowship and previous fellows.
Philbrick Yadav, who has lived in Yemen and is a member of the executive committee of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies, has been writing about Yemen's opposition politics for more than a decade. Since Yemen's uprising in 2011, she's published a book exploring the dynamics of Islamist activism and alliance building, and articles in several academic journals, including The International Journal of Middle East Studies and Middle East Report.
In 2017, she was elected to the Project on Middle East Political Science steering committee and co-edited the January 2018 POMEPS report on Politics, Governance, and Reconstruction in Yemen. She has appeared recently on the BBC and CNN, analyzing developments in the civil war in Yemen. Meanwhile, the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University published her analysis Fragmentation and Localization in Yemen's War: Challenges and Opportunities for Peace.
A member of the HWS faculty since 2007, Philbrick Yadav earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in anthropology and Middle Eastern studies from Smith College, and has spent several years conducting field research in Yemen, Lebanon and Egypt. Before joining the Colleges, she taught at Mount Holyoke College, and in 2008, was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.