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Fellow Samer Shehata Named 2009 Carnegie Scholar

Samer S. Shehata, a Woodrow Wilson Center fellow and a professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, has been named one of the 24 scholars in the Carnegie Corporation's 2009 class.

Samer S. Shehata, a Woodrow Wilson Center fellow and a professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, has been named one of the 24 scholars in the Carnegie Corporation's 2009 class, each of whom will receive two-year research grants of up to $100,000.

Shehata's grant project will continue his work on Islamist electoral participation, his topic of study at the Wilson Center. Analyzing ethnographic information, interviews, and official records, he will examine the efficacy of Islamist parties in elections in semi-authoritarian regimes and the effects of their activity on Middle East politics as a whole.

Shehata joined the Wilson Center as a fellow in September 2008, where he began his project on semi-authoritarian elections and Islamist electoral participation. He encountered this subject while spending the 2005-2006 academic year in Cairo, during which Egypt had its first multi-candidate presidential election as well as parliamentary elections with historic success by Islamist party candidates.

"I am delighted to be given the opportunity to pursue my research on Islamist electoral and parliamentary participation in the Middle East as a Carnegie Scholar," Shehata said in a release by the Carnegie Corporation. "Islamist groups are, without question, the most popular and influential force in the Middle East today, and elections in the region are taking place more frequently and with greater seriousness. My research examines the intersection of these two important phenomena: Islamists and elections."

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