Beth Whitaker

Beth Elise Whitaker is associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research examines migration and security issues in Africa. With a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, she and several colleagues have built a dataset of rebel groups’ illicit funding sources (particularly natural resources and crime) and are exploring how different funding strategies influence conflict dynamics. As a Fulbright Scholar in Kenya, she conducted research on U.S.-African counter-terrorism cooperation. She also has done extensive research on the politics of immigration in Africa, including the rise of anti-foreigner attitudes, comparative refugee policy, and the political engagement of diaspora communities. She has done fieldwork in Kenya (2005-2006, 2015), Tanzania (1996-1998, 2003), and Botswana (2005). From 2010 to 2012, she served as chair of the African Politics Conference Group, a network of political scientists who study Africa. She worked previously at the Brookings Institution and the American Council on Education and has been a consultant for the U.S. Department of State, the Social Science Research Council, the United Nations Foundation, and Save the Children Fund. Her articles appear in Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, African Studies Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration Review, International Affairs, Third World Quarterly, and Journal of Refugee Studies, among others. She received her Ph.D. in 1999 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.