Samer S. Shehata is Colin Mackey and Patricia Molina de Mackey Associate Professor in Middle East Studies in the Department of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. A specialist in Egyptian politics and the Muslim Brotherhood, he has previously taught at Georgetown University, New York University, Columbia University, and the American University in Cairo. He received his PhD from the Politics Department at Princeton University in 2000.

Shehata’s research interests include Middle East politics, Islamist politics and movements, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, the political economy of the Middle East, social class and labor, “development,” elections, Egyptian politics, ethnography, and the Hajj. He has published widely in both academic and policy journals. His articles have appeared in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Current History, MERIP, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Middle East Policy, Folklore and as book chapters and encyclopedia articles. His analysis and op-ed pieces have been published in the New York Times, Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune, Salon, Slate, Arab Reform Bulletin, Al Hayat, Al Ahram Weekly and other publications.

His current book project, The Muslim Brotherhood: From Opposition Movement to Political Power, is under contract with Stanford University Press. The book will examine the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement in formal politics and analyze the group’s political strategies, particularly its electoral participation and parliamentary activities during the last decade of Mubarak’s rule through the present. Extensive field research with Brotherhood candidates during election campaigns in Mansoura (2005), Alexandria (2010, 2011), and Cairo (2011) will provide the basis for this book.

He is the editor of a recently published book entitled Islamist Politics in the Middle East: Movements and Change (Routledge, 2012), which addressed a number of central questions in the study of Islamist politics in the Middle East.

He received a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars for the 2021-2022 year. During the fellowship, he was a Visiting Scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace and also worked as a Special Adviser in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor/Office of Near Eastern Affairs.