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, The Business of Ballots: Financial Globalization and Women’s Political Agency in the Arab World, is based on two years of field research across Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen. Her book chapter “No Agency without Grassroots Autonomy” is forthcoming in the edited volume Empowering Women After the Arab Spring. Welborne is also a principal investigator on a co-authored book, The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States, which showcases results from the largest academic survey of Muslim American women enquiring into 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 Social Sciences Quarterly, Political 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). Welborne has also been the recipient of a POMEPS grant for research on the politics of religious education in Oman.