Lillian Frost

Lillian Frost’s research interests include citizenship, forced migration, law and society, gender, and Middle East politics. She studies the legal and practiced dimensions of citizenship as well as variations in citizenship policies toward migrant groups and women. She has two book projects that reflect these interests. The first examines when and why host states adopt ambiguous policies that say one thing in law but do another in implementation. This project analyzes variations in the implementation of different Palestinian refugee groups’ legal rights in Jordan using archival, interview, and legal data as well as 14 months of fieldwork in Jordan. The second book project examines the persistence of discrimination toward women in state nationality laws that prevents female, unlike male, citizens from passing their nationality onto their spouses and children. This project studies variations in this discrimination using an original 16-year global dataset as well as case studies from across the Arab world.

She has received numerous grants and fellowships supporting her research. These include a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellowship at the European University Institute, Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellowship from the United States Institute of Peace and Minerva Research Initiative, Middle East Initiative Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowship at Harvard University, and Fulbright Fellowship for dissertation research. She also regularly presents at academic conferences, including the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Middle East Studies Association, and Law and Society Association. In addition, she has given talks on her research at a variety of universities, including Harvard University, University of Washington Seattle, Maastricht University, and University of Pennsylvania.

She completed a bachelor’s degree in political and social thought as well as in foreign affairs at the University of Virginia, where she also completed a master’s degree in public policy. She earned her master’s degree and doctorate in political science from the George Washington University.