Salma Mousa

Salma Mousa is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also serves as an advisory faculty director of the Bedari Kindness Institute and the Islamic Studies program, and peacebuilding lead for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCDO)'s initiative on reducing conflict and improving performance in the economy. Her research examines strategies for building social cohesion, often through field experiments conducted in partnership with civil society organizations and local governments in the Middle East.

Before joining UCLA, she was an assistant professor of political science at Yale University and a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Immigration Policy Lab and the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Dr. Mousa’s work has been published in Science, the American Political Science Review, Economic Policy, the Journal of Public Economics, and featured in The Economist, BBC, Der Spiegel, Freakonomics Radio, The Times of London, and an Emmy-nominated episode of PBS’s NOVA. She received her PhD in political science from Stanford University and a BSc in international politics from Georgetown University in Qatar.