Janine R. Wedel
Janine R. Wedel

Janine R. Wedel is an anthropologist (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) and university professor in the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at George Mason University. 

Her new book Unaccountable, published at the end of 2014, was named in Bloomberg’s survey of 2014 favorite reads.  Other publications include three award-winning and widely reviewed books (http://janinewedel.info/books.html): Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (2009); Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (2001); and The Private Poland (1986).

Winner of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, Wedel is also a four-time Fulbright fellow and recipient of awards from the National Science Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, German Marshall Fund, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and Ford Foundation, among many others. 

A public intellectual and featured columnist for The Huffington Post, Wedel also writes for outlets that include the New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal Europe, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

Her speaking venues range from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, National Press Club, and the National Science Council to Oxford, Central European University (Budapest), Institute of Social Studies (the Hague), United Nations University (Helsinki), Freie Universität (Berlin), TEDx (Berlin), the Bruno Kreisky Institute (Vienna), Copenhagen Business School (Copenhagen), and the European Journalism Observatory (Lugano).

Media appearances include BBC, Al-Jazeera, MSNBC, CNN, PBS’s Frontline, C-Span, and NPR.  Wedel is president of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP), affiliated with the American Anthropological Association.