Bozena Welborne teaches courses in Middle East politics, international political economy, global development, and women and politics. Her current research considers the impact of foreign capital and Arab diaspora networks on institutional reform and social change in the Middle East and North Africa with a focus on gender. Her current book project, Women, Money, and Political Participation in the Middle East, is based on two years of field research across Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, with additional insights from Oman, Lebanon, and Yemen. Welborne is also a co-author of the book, The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States (Cornell university Press 2018), which showcases results from the largest academic survey of Muslim-American women regarding their Islamic practice and politicization.

Prior to Smith, Welborne was an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is a contributing scholar to the Women and Human Rights in the Middle East Program at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. Her research has been published in the Journal of Arabian Studies, Social Sciences Quarterly, Politicial Research Quarterly, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, Journal of North African Studies, by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and also by the Baker Institute for Public Policy (BIPP). In addition, Welborne has been the recipient of a POMEPS TRE grant for research on the politics of religious education in Oman.