Yael Warshel: Accomplished Leader and Administrator
Illustrations of my leadership and administrative outreach worldwide.
2024 - Association of Middle East Children and Youth Studies, President
2023 - 2024 Association of Middle East Children and Youth Studies, President Elect
2023 - Association of Middle East Children and Youth Studies, Board Member
2017 - Association of Middle East Children and Youth Studies, helped start fledgling organization
AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR MAGHRIB STUDIES
2021 - 2024 American Institute for Maghrib Studies, Vice President
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Overseeing and steering the North African Studies organization, an international association that serves as the principle professional organization for US-based scholars studying North Africa and Northwest Africa. It is 1 of 25 members of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). Headquartered in the US, as its VP, I also oversee its two overseas research centers, Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA) in Algeria and Centre D'etudes Maghrebines a Tunis (CEMAT) in Tunisia and work closely with the Tangier American Legation TALIM, our partner center in Morocco that serves as our AIMS Center there.
2016 - 2023 American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), Three-Term Elected Board Member (One 1-year term, followed by two 3-year terms).
2023 - present Mauritania Overseas Research Center Steering Committee Member
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Establishing a research center in Mauritania.
2021 - 2024 Executive Committee Member
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Part of four-member committee determining and implementing policy and decisions of AIMS
2021 - 2024 Grants Committee Chair
- Adjudicated proposals for all Annual Long and Short Term Grants, determined awards for all fellowship applicants to pursue field research in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania (reviewed three years in a row).
- Reviewed 80 Short and Long Terms Grants over three year period I chaired committee to make awards to scholars pursuing research about topics ranging from Spanish, French and Ottoman rule over North Africa, decolonization and post-colonization; Tunisian visual arts; and women, violence and the Algerian war for independence to Moroccan language policy; Moroccan music and dance; and rural oasis, irrigation and olive harvesting practices.
2021 - 2024 Awards Committee Chair
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Adjudicated 2021 and 2022 Mark Tessler Graduate Student Paper Prize for best paper in North African Studies (reviewed two years in a row).
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Adjudicating the 2022, 2023 and 2024 Jeanne Jeffers Mrad Graduate Student Travel Award and the I. William Zartman North African Travel Award to present a paper to the Middle East Studies Association annual conference (reviewing three years in a row).
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Reviewed 27 Mrad and Zartman Awards combined, over three year period that I chaired Committee
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2020 - present Health and Safety Committee and Covid Affiliation Letters Committee Chair (Co-Chair 2020-2022).
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Oversee requests for research affiliations and clearances: updated our affiliations letters with respect to the fluid SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic requirements and research restrictions for fellows conducting field research in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania.
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Oversee other ongoing health and safety matters.
2020 - 2021 Conference Committee Co-Chair.
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Reviewed annual conference in-person Covid-19 options for awarded conference proposal held in Morocco Summer 2022: “An Aqueous Bridge: People and Objects in Motion in the Western Mediterranean, from the Medieval to the Modern Eras.”
2019 - 2021 Grants Committee Member.
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Adjudicated proposals for 68 Annual Long and Short Term Grants to make fellowship awards to applicants to pursue field research in North Africa (reviewed two years in a row) for topics ranging from "Third Worldism" to Mauritanian political formations.
2019 - 2020 Libya Committee Member.
Engaged in rare efforts to support continued research about Libya despite ongoing civil war.
2016 - 2019 Conference Committee Member.
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Adjudicated proposals for annual conferences in Algeria, and helped successfully oversee the resultant two conferences held in July 2019 (Awarded conference proposal: “The Mediterranean Seen from North Africa.") and July 2018 ("Students, Universities and Knowledge Production in the Maghrib.”).
2023 - 2024 Peace and Conflict Division of the National Communication Association Legislative Assembly
Representative
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Reviewing NCA legislative policies
2022 - 2023 Peace and Conflict Division of the National Communication Association Nominating Committee
Representative
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Recruited nominees to run for NCA Leadership positions
2019 - present Co-Founder, Co-Convener and Multiple Principle Investigator (with Desiree Lim, Rock Ethics Institute and Philosophy, Penn State)
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Co-directed research and outreach concerning the human right to communicate of stateless, forcibly migrated and semi-nomadic populations.
2019 - present Founding Director, Children, Media and Conflict Zones Lab
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Directed Lab for last 5 years, recruiting, hiring, training and mentoring 21 graduate and undergraduate students in the research and outreach mission of the Lab.
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Lab aims to address the lack of scholarship addressing children, youth and media in international and global conflict zones to provide evidence-based policy and practice recommendations.
2016 - present Founder, Convener and Principle Investigator
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Originated and implemented Children, Youth and Media in International and Global Conflict Zones Ethics Initiative, and spin-off Human Rights and Forced-Migration Initiative. Won $46,715 and $51,500, respectively, for total of $98,215 in seed funding to develop both initiatives. As Principal Investigator of the former, founded and direct the Children, Media and Conflict Zones Lab to implement the work of both initiatives.
2018 - present Division 48: Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence: Peace Psychology Division of the
American Psychological Association, Peace Education Working Group Committee Member.
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Fostering the advancement of peace education scholarship and curricula
2017 - 2019 Global Communication and Social Change Division of the International Communication Association,
Membership Task Force Committee Member.
2017 - Children’s Media Association-Los Angeles, Steering Committee Member.
2023 - Present Springer Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communication Editorial Board Member
2010 - 2020 Digest of Middle East Studies (DOMES), Editorial Board Member, and Chair of E-Books Reviews.
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Oversaw review of E-books
Ad-hoq Editorial Work (served as peer-reviewer of scholarly journal articles and books)
Routledge
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
International Journal of Learning and Media
Journal of Communication
African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review
Terrorism and Political Violence
Africa Today
Journal of North African Studies
L'Ouest Saharien
AIMS Executive Committee:
James A. Miller, AIMS President
Mia Fuller, University of California at Berkeley, AIMS Treasurer
Gwyneth Talley, American University in Cairo, AIMS Secretary
Allen Fromherz, Georgia State University, AIMS Immediate Past President
Jonathan Wyrtzen, Yale Univeristy, AIMS Immediate Past Vice President
“In her years on the AIMS board… Dr. Warshel has been the first and only communication scholar to serve AIMS.”
“Warshel has taken the time to look at various AIMS policies – for example, the book and the graduate student paper prize – and made important and well received changes.”
“Warshel’s workload in AIMS is heavy and significant, especially regarding the Fellowship program [which she chairs]."
"Officers in AIMS must think strategically and diplomatically. Ms Terry Ryan, AIMS US Director at the University of Arizona, joins me in adding that Dr. Warshel asks critical questions others have not in the past as new situations emerge and new difficulties pop up, also demonstrating the excellence with which Warshel has conducted herself. Having been continuously re-elected to AIMS is also further testament to that excellence.”
“... our work in the Maghrib requires sensitivity and awareness of the bigger picture of how life is changing for everyone in that part of the world, knowledge production about which is marginalized. Warshel’s research on the Western Sahara is set within one of the most delicate political and social frameworks anywhere, and her ability to operate in that environment is testimony to her talent to take the long view and act with caution while in the field and with publication. As a testament to that talent, Warshel’s previous work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, set within the sharply different context of the Middle East, has been cited as “fair” and “even,” rare words for any study of any aspect of Israel-Palestine. More recently, her work on the Western Sahara has been characterized as being ‘sympathetic to all sides, which is rare… in Morocco-Western Sahara debates.’”
“I conclude by saying that we in AIMS are fortunate to have Yael Warshel as a colleague. She is a trusted and valued member of the organization. In her role as Vice President, she performs many duties that lie beyond the requirements of the position and that resound impactfully with excellent effects throughout the vast ecosystem that is AIMS. Her leadership has, in turn, impacted AIMS own contributions to scholarship that is often marginalized, and as is apparent from her unusual positionality, particularly, within the field of communication.
Hil Malatino, Interim Director of the Rock Ethics Institute (REI)
I can "testify to her [Dr. Warshel's] excellent participation in the Rock Ethics Institute as core faculty... ."
"I consider her work with these initiatives [the Children, Youth, and Media in International and Global Conflict Zones and Human Rights and Forced Migration Initiatives that Warshel founded] excellent, above and beyond the expectations we have for our core faculty, who usually run one initiatives, sometimes solo, sometimes collaboratively. In addition to this, she founded the REI-funded Children, media and Conflict Zones lab, which enabled her to recruit, train, teach, and mentor students from across the university in a range of critical thinking skills, research methods, scholarly publishing and policy work.”
Sinfree Makoni, Head of Penn State African Studies Program
About the caliber of her editorial contributions: ["Warshel] served as a reviewer for top-tier journals, Africa Today, African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review, Journal of North African Studies and others.”