Janine R. Wedel

Janine R. Wedel is a Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government, where she serves as Co-Director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC). She maintains additional affiliations as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm and a Faculty Associate of the Petrach Program on Ukraine. Her distinguished career spans academia, policy, and public intellectual engagement, with previous appointments including Global Policy Chair at the University of Bath, fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and fellow at the New America Foundation.

Wedel's research focuses on power networks, shadow elites, informality, and weaponized corruption through the lens of social anthropology. Her groundbreaking work applies anthropological insights to topics traditionally dominated by political science and economics. Her most recent book, Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security (2014), was named in Bloomberg's survey of 2014 favorite reads. Her forthcoming book, Elite Influence: Everything You Need to Know, will be published by Oxford University Press. Her influential work Shadow Elite received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was book of the month for The Huffington Post.

Wedel's publications reveal consistent themes of elite power structures, corruption mechanisms, and the anthropology of policy across multiple geopolitical contexts. Her work increasingly focuses on the intersection of corruption, democratic erosion, and power networks in both Western democracies and post-Soviet contexts, with recent scholarship examining Ukraine-Russia relations and reconstruction aid. Her research methodology combines anthropological fieldwork with policy analysis to uncover informal power structures that shape formal governance.

• Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order (2001)
• Five-time Fulbright fellow
• Awards from National Science Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and numerous other prestigious institutions
• Extensive media commentary in New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other major outlets

As a public intellectual, Wedel has contributed congressional testimony and analysis to major media outlets worldwide. She is frequently invited to speak at leading academic institutions including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, and Oxford. She has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, PBS's Frontline, C-Span, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and NPR. Wedel is also the co-founder and past president of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP), a section affiliated with the American Anthropological Association. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, reflecting its global impact and relevance.