Janine R. Wedel facts for kids

Janine R. Wedel is an American anthropologist and university professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a senior research fellow of the New America Foundation. She is the author of several books and many articles on some key systemic processes of the day. She is the first anthropologist to win the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

Biography

Wedel received a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. She writes about governing, corruption, foreign aid, and influence elites through the lens of a social anthropologist. A university professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, Professor Wedel has contributed many articles and opinion pieces to more than a dozen major outlets, including: The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Nation, The National Interest, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Salon, The Boston Globe, Washington Times and Politico.

Wedel has been a pioneer in applying anthropological insights to topics that are typically the terrain of political scientists, economists or sociologists. After 25 years studying the role of informal systems in shaping communist and post-communist societies, Wedel also turned her attention to the United States, and has identified some parallels.

Wedel's work has been translated into: French, German, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, Hungarian, Danish and Mandarin. She has testified before Congressional committees and subcommittees and appeared on television and radio programs, including BBC, CNN, NPR and PBS's Frontline, and associate-produced three PBS documentaries. Her stops on the university lecture circuit include: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, Princeton, Oxford, Central European University and the Free University of Berlin. Her non-university audiences include: TEDx (Berlin), the Bruno Kreisky Institute (Vienna), the European Journalism Observatory (Lugano, Switzerland), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Press Club and National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences workshops.

Wedel is co-founder and president of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy formerly known as the Interest Group for the Anthropology of Public Policy.

Areas of research

• International Commerce and Policy
• Anthropology of Public Policy
• Corruption
• Eastern Europe
• Foreign Aid
• Governance
• Privatization of Government
• Social Networks