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Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate at Pennsylvania State University. I am pursuing a dual-title Ph.D. in Political Science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. My major field of study is comparative politics. My research focuses on the effect of electoral institutions on women’s political ambition, with a regional focus on the Middle East. My dissertation examines the factors that impact women’s desire to run for political office in Jordan. I am a 2024 -2025 Fulbright Jordan student researcher and a 2024 APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grantee (APSA DDRIG). I received my B.A. in Political Science from Skidmore College in 2020. I studied Arabic language and heritage at the American University of Sharjah in the UAE, at Indiana University Bloomington, and at the Qasid Arabic Institute in Amman, Jordan.
My dissertation, The Gendered Effects of Quotas and Political Organization Rules on Political Ambition: Evidence in Jordan, examines the gendered effects of electoral and political organization rules on political ambition in Jordan, defined as the desire to pursue political office. Current research on the determinants of political ambition often does not account for the effects of electoral rules, or examine if these effects are different for men and women. In my dissertation, I consider how electoral rules, especially those shaping political organization recruitment and support, affect individual ambition. While existing literature focuses largely on democratic systems, my research shifts attention to a competitive authoritarian context, where elections exist but are heavily moderated by the regime. My dissertation’s most significant theoretical contribution is that political organization recruitment and support networks are 1) influenced by gender quota policies and 2) have direct, gendered effects on political ambition.
Lindsay Walsh 