Lillian Frost

Dr. Lillian Frost’s research interests include citizenship, migration, law and society, gender, and Middle East politics, particularly in Jordan. Currently, she studies the legal and practiced dimensions of citizenship as well as variations in citizenship policies toward migrant groups and women. She has two projects that reflect these interests. The first examines when and why host states adopt ambiguous policies that specify a right one way in law and another way in implementation instructions. 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 16 months of fieldwork in Jordan. The second project examines the persistence of discrimination toward women in state nationality laws that prevents female, unlike male, citizens from passing their nationality (i.e., legal citizen status) onto their spouses and children. This project studies variations in this type of discrimination using an original 16-year global dataset as well as case studies from across the Arab world.

She has published her research in outlets such as Law & Society Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Comparative Migration Studies, and 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, International Studies 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 Yale University, University of Richmond, McGill University, University of California Los Angeles, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 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, and her dissertation won the 2021 Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association’s Middle East and North Africa Politics Section.