Janine R. Wedel

Janine R. Wedel is an award-winning author and University Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University (also a Global Policy Chair at the University of Bath, UK). She writes about governing, corruption, and influence elites through the lens of a social anthropologist. A five-time Fulbright fellow, she is the only anthropologist to win the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, an honor typically reserved for political scientists. A public intellectual, Wedel is a pioneer in applying anthropological insights to topics dominated by political scientists, economists, or sociologists. Her most recent book, Unaccountable: How The Establishment Corrupted our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class (Pegasus Paperback, October 2016), was named in Bloombergs survey of 2014 favorite reads. Her other books including the prize-winning Shadow Elite: How the Worlds New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (Basic Books 2009); and Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (Palgrave 2001). She has contributed analysis pieces to more than a dozen major outlets, including the Financial Times, New York Times, Foreign Policy, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal Europe, and the Nation, and her work has been reviewed or translated into more than a dozen languages.