Our Team
Vera M. Long Building, Office 111
Martha C. Johnson
Associate Professor of Political Science
Kathryn P. Hannam Endowed Professor in American Studies
Education
BA, Smith College
MA, University of California, Berkeley
PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Professional Interests
Comparative politics, African politics, democratization, food politics, the politics of development
Bio
Martha Johnson studies African politics, with a focus on Francophone West Africa and an interest in women’s representation and the politics of state capacity and foreign aid. She has conducted fieldwork in Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Benin, funded by the Fulbright program and the FAO. Most recently, Johnson interviewed nearly 100 women who ran for local office in Benin. Her work has been published in such journals as the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and the Journal of Modern African Studies. She is co-editor of Women and Power in Africa: Aspiring, Campaigning, and Governing (Oxford University Press). Her ongoing research projects examine how economic laws limit women’s political empowerment, how evaluations of women leaders in times of crisis are gendered, and how patronage politics and revenue pressures shaping state capacity in Africa. She is also co-editor-in-chief of Africa Spectrum, an interdisciplinary, open access African studies journal.
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