Data

Ministers in the Middle East

This dataset tracks every minister in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Syria from the colonial period until 2018. The dataset records cabinet dynamics as well as each minister’s portfolio(s) and biographical details including their birthplace, education, socioeconomic class, and other salient social information like religion, ethnicity, and tribal affiliation. I use this dataset to track changes in these countries’ selectorates over time and to measure the inclusiveness of MENA ruling coalitions. This dataset is based on political biographies, memoirs, government documents, as well as archival research in the British Archives and the Jordan National Library. Data collection for the rest of the MENA region is on-going. Research assistance from Naela Elmore, Alya Khemakhem, Ismail Jamai Ait Hmitti, and Mostafa Elsaid.

MENA Land Reform Database

This dataset tracks all Ottoman, colonial and post-colonial spells of property rights reform, expropriation, and redistribution (N=1200 country-year observations) for 18 MENA countries from 1830 to present.

Hashemite Parliamentary Elites Biographical Dataset

This dataset includes basic biographical (birth place and year, occupation, social group) and party affiliation data for all members of Parliament in Hashemite Iraq and Transjordan/Jordan. Data for Jordan was compiled with Laith al-Ajlouni (CEU), and Iraqi data was collected with research assistance from Julio Moreno Cirujano (SOAS) and Astrid Hampe-Nathaniel (LSE).

The Middle East/North Africa Historical Data Archive (MENAHDA)

This project is a major data collection effort with Prof. Melani Cammett and Gabriel Koehler-Derrick (Harvard), with technical support from the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science. The database and website will be a permanent digital repository for the tables of more than 1,000 statistical yearbooks from the MENA region, which were published by the Ottoman state, European colonial powers and post-independence governments in more than sixteen countries in the region. Datasets created from the information in these publications will provide longtitudinal national and sub-national data on a wide range of environmental, economic, demographic, and political statistics. When data collection is complete, the MENAHDA will become public resource for MENA historical, geographic, and social scientific scholarship.

CoronaNet Dyadic Event Dataset

I am the co-PI for dataset validation on the CoronaNet Research Project, where Joan Barcelo (NYUAD) and I designed and implemented a human-coder validation strategy based on standard machine learing protocols.