Diwan, Kristin Smith

Assistant Professor, American University, Washington, D.C. Kristin Smith Diwan is assistant professor of Middle East Politics at the American University School of International Service. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University and holds an M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Diwan works in the areas of comparative politics and international relations and specializes in Arab and Islamic politics. She previously taught at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and was also associated with the Georgetown Center for Contemporary Arab Studies where she held the Qatar Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her dissertation, “From Petrodollars to Islamic Dollars: Islamic Finance in the Arab Gulf,” explores the political and economic dynamics behind the increasing Islamization of Gulf societies. Research for this project was funded through grants from the SSRC and the Fulbright Commission, and it has resulted in the publication of chapters on the political aspects of Islamic banking in Kuwait in The Politics of Islamic Finance (Edinburgh University Press, 2004) and on the politics of international financial harmonization in Islamic Finance: Current Legal and Regulatory Issues (Harvard Law School, 2005). Diwan is currently expanding her study of the political economy of Islamist politics and the social and institutional origins of Islamist movements in the Arab Gulf.