Janine Clark

Janine Clark is a Professor and Associate Chair (Research) in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on decentralization, Islamist movements, civil society activism, and gender politics in the Middle East and North Africa. She leads a SSHRC-funded project on sexuality politics and gender activism in Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia. Her work spans field research in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen.

Clark holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, an MA from Carleton University, and a BA from the University of Waterloo. She specializes in Comparative Politics with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Her academic contributions include two single-authored books: Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco: Strategies of Centralization and Decentralization (Columbia UP, 2018) and Islam, Charity and Activism: Middle-Class Networks and Social Welfare in Egypt, Jordan and Yemen (IU Press, 2004). She co-edited Political Science Research in the Middle East and North Africa: Methodological and Ethical Challenges (OUP, 2018) and Economic Liberalization, Democratization, and Civil Society in the Developing World (Macmillan, 2000). Her articles appear in journals like Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Mediterranean Politics.

Her research emphasizes the intersection of state-society relations, gender, and grassroots activism in authoritarian and transitional contexts.