Sarah E. Parkinson

SARAH E. PARKINSON received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2013 and joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 2016 as the Aronson Assistant Professor. Her research examines organizational behavior and social change during and following war. Focusing predominantly on the Middle East and North Africa, she uses social network analysis and ethnographic methods to study the ways that actors such as militant organizations, political parties, and humanitarian groups cope with crisis, disruption, and fragmentation. She has conducted extensive fieldwork among Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Lebanon and with humanitarian organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan. Parkinson’s work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Social Science and Medicine, The Middle East Report, and the Monkey Cage.

Parkinson holds a PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a BA in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University. She was recently awarded a Berman Institute of Bioethics Exploration of Practical Ethics Research Grant to conduct research on ethical communities of practice in conflict zones. Previously, Parkinson has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota, the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University and at Yale University’s Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence.

Parkinson serves on the Steering Committee of the Project on Middle East Political Science.