Alissa Walter, History, Georgetown University, received a TAARII US Research Fellowship for 2015 for her project Ba‘thist Baghdad: A History of Non-Elite City Life under Authoritarianism, Wars, and Sanctions.

Alissa Walter’s dissertation presents a history of Baghdad’s lower classes as they experienced regime changes, urbanization, authoritarian governance, wars, and sanctions in post-colonial Iraq, with a focus on the Ba‘thist period (1968–2003). Centering her study on Baghdad provides insights into how government, party, and society interacted in the center of the capital city. Drawing on archival research in England and France (and other non-TAARII funded research sites), Walter will study the transformations of neighborhood social institutions, including black markets, smuggling rings, charitable organizations, welfare systems, religious movements, and neighborhood committees during the tumultuous years of the Ba‘th regime. Her conclusions about the social transformations of Baghdad under Ba‘th Party rule will point to the long-term factors that contributed to violent societal breakdown and sectarianism post-2003. Her research project is positioned to provide valuable insights to historians to understand everyday life under the Ba‘th regime as well as to political scientists who are concerned with contemporary developments in Iraq.