Adria Lawrence
Adria Lawrence is the Aronson Associate Professor of International Studies and Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.
Professor Lawrence’s research examines violent and nonviolent political action in autocratic and imperial regimes, with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. One strand of her work focuses on the motivations of protestors, asking how ideas, identities, and experiences with the state shape the actions people take to oppose their regimes. She explores these questions in her 2013 book, Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire (Cambridge University Press 2013), as well as in articles such as “Nationalism, Collaboration, and Resistance: France under Nazi Occupation” (with Matthew A. Kocher and Nuno P. Monteiro) in International Security, and “Repression and Activism among the Arab Spring’s First Movers: Evidence from Morocco’s February 20th Movement” in the British Journal of Political Science.
A second line of inquiry examines the autocratic and imperial states that seek to restrict political opposition and suppress collective action. Her research investigates the gap between how states describe their rule, and how they actually govern. Her current book project argues that the distinction between direct and indirect rule is best understood as an ideological claim and not an accurate description of colonial practice. It was not the “directness” of rule that varied within and across colonies in Africa, but the use of violence and coercion. She has also examined state perspectives in “The Political Origins of Colonial Land Policy: Evidence from British India and French Algeria” in Comparative Political Studies and in “Why Monarchies Still Reign,” in the Journal of Democracy.
