Ann Marie Wainscott is Associate Professor of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where she teaches courses in Comparative Politics, Middle East politics, and Authoritarianism.
Her first book, Bureaucratizing Islam: Morocco and the War on Terror was published by Cambridge in 2017. It argues that Arab states used the context of the War on Terror to absorb previously independent religious institutions, fundamentally altering both the state and the country’s religious landscape. Religious elites now exist in a complex incentive structure where dissenting is costly professionally.
Articles related to this project examine the impact of this policy on education and foreign policy. A third article co-authored with Ani Sarkissian (MSU) and funded by a Project Launch Grant from the Global Religion Research Initiative is under review.
A second research program looks at Iraqi religious politics. Wainscott supervised a research project at the United States Institute of Peace as an American Academy of Religion Fellow from 2017-2019 that resulted in the publication “Engaging the Post-ISIS Iraqi Religious Landscape for Peace and Reconciliation.” The report is available in English and Arabic. See the Iraq tab above for more. Her current book project expands this report with a focus on the social media use of Iraqi Shia clerics and their followers.
Her third book project examines the industry of knowledge production with a focus on the range of institutions that produce “facts” such as scholars, the media, corporations, governments, think tanks and citizens. The book argues that producers and consumers of knowledge have different and often conflicting interests, requiring an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the industry of knowledge production in order to navigate its many forms.
After more than a decade of teaching, she is also in the midst of compiling her own reader, Comparative Politics: An Alternative Anthology. The reader tells the story of the field through the voices of mostly female scholars, and is under press with Cognella.
Outside of the Academy, Wainscott leads Grief Care, a seasonal program where grief guides accompany individuals processing loss. She is a certified End-of-Life doula and can be hired to accompany individuals and their families.
Wainscott combines two of her main practices for processing grief - yoga and flowers - in her business Flower and Flow.
Finally, her memoir, Quiet Heart, documents her grief journey. Random musings including occasional excerpts from the memoir appear under the Writing tab above.
When not busy with her many side hustles, Wainscott is a domestic goddess and can be found mopping her floors or having a dinner party. Long-term she is plotting a retreat space called the House of Healing.
Profile picture by Dana Greene, Greene Peas in a Pod Photography