Dr Clarissa de Waal

MA (Edinburgh), MPhil (Cantab), PhD (Cantab)

Privileges of a Fellow Emerita

College Roles

  • Privileges of a Fellow Emerita

Contact

Email: crd21@cam.ac.uk

Biography

Dr Clarissa de Waal is a social anthropologist. She has carried out extensive research over more than three decades in Greece and Albania. Between 2007 and 2012 she made five fieldtrips to southern Iran after which she was refused a visa for further fieldwork. The theme common to her research across these three very different countries is the relation between economic development and ideology at the provincial level and power structures at state level.

Recent publications: 2015 Everyday Iran A provincial portrait of the Islamic Republic; 2018 Beyond the Bailouts The anthropology and history of the Greek Crisis.

Research Interests

In the early 1990s post-communist governments were said to be in transition from dictatorship to democracy. Thirty years later democracy is proving to be elusive. With particular focus on Albania, Dr de Waal’s research seeks to identify the factors underlying the trend to authoritarianism exemplified by so many post-communist governments today. Her first monograph on Albania was published in 2005 Albania Today A Portrait of Post-communist Turbulence. An updated version came out in paperback in 2014 Albania Portrait of a Country in Transition.