Marsin Alshamary is a nonresident fellow with the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where she was a postdoctoral research fellow from 2020-21. She is also a research fellow at the Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs with the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research examines the intersection of religion and politics in the Middle East, looking particularly at how the Shia religious establishment in Iraq has intervened in formal politics, protests, and peacebuilding. Alshamary has led a project mapping civil society in Iraq, supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. In addition to her research, Alshamary has written extensively on civil society in Iraq and the country’s post-2003 protests. She has written opinion pieces for Order from Chaos, The Washington Post, PRI, War on the Rocks, 1001 Iraqi Thoughts, and other outlets. She has been featured on television and radio with Al Jazeera English, BBC, CNN, PRI’s The World, Radio France Internationale, and TRT. Her analysis has been featured in articles from AFP, Al Jazeera, The Associated Press, Vox Media, The Washington Post, Reuters, and others. She holds a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s in international relations and French from Wellesley College, where she was an Albright Fellow.