Sam Dunham
Bio
I am a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Yale University. I work at the intersection of comparative politics and international security.
I study why state approaches to repression and control vary across time and space, with a special focus on empire in the Middle East and North Africa. My dissertation project explains variation in strategies of control and violence production in Mandatory Iraq under the British Empire. I use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and draw from a range of English and Arabic-language archival and secondary sources.
My work has been generously supported by the Yale MacMillan Center, the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy, and the Department of Education through the Center for Arabic Study Abroad. From 2022 to 2023 and in 2025, I was a Center for Arabic Study Abroad Fellow in Amman, Jordan. I hold a BA in Government and Economics from the College of William & Mary.