About Naima

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

My book project — based on my doctoral research at Harvard University — focuses on U.S. and Chinese public diplomacy, comparing these two models of foreign audience engagement. In it, I offer a theory about the individual-level psychological and behavioral effects of public diplomacy. My original framework goes beyond framings of public diplomacy that consider it simply a means to boost a state's soft power, and shows that it can also be used to influence perceptions of other states, shape ideas about domestic policies, and impact certain political behaviors. Furthermore, I demonstrate that public diplomacy can sometimes work against a state and undermine its foreign policy goals.

I specialize in U.S. and Chinese foreign policy, with a focus on public diplomacy and the global information space. My writing has been published or is forthcoming in Security Studies, the Journal of Experimental Political Science (JEPS), and in the 2022 book, The China Questions II (Harvard University Press). It has also appeared in various public-facing outlets, including The Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post, the Emerging Voices on the New Normal in Asia Series of the National Bureau of Asian Research, The Diplomat, and The Root.

My work has been supported by the Wilson Center China Fellowship, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, the Morris Abrams Award in International Relations, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. It has also been supported by several interdisciplinary centers at Harvard, including the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Center for American Political Studies, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the Harvard Experimental Working Group. I was selected as a 2021 Public Intellectual Program Fellow at the National Committee of U.S.-China Relations and as a 2017 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow.

My academic work intersects with my contributions to global development and diplomacy. I am a Nonresident Fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a member of the Board of Directors of Oxfam America, and a member of the Advisory Board of Foreign Policy for America. Before pursuing my Ph.D., I was a Pickering Fellow and a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State, where I worked in the public diplomacy cone. I was the Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Alexandria, Egypt during the Arab Spring (2011-2013). I also served as a Consular Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China during the Obama administration's "Pivot to Asia" (2014-2015). I worked as an intern and an advance associate for the White House in 2010. I contributed to the first ever Forum for Young African Leaders hosted by President Obama, and I worked on subsequent U.S. government youth outreach programming in Africa and the Middle East.

I received a Bachelor’s degree (BA) in International Relations with honors from Stanford University. Moreover, I was a Belfer Center International and Global Affairs fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, where I graduated with a Master’s in Public Policy (MPP). I completed my Ph.D. in political science in the Department of Government at Harvard University. I am proficient in Mandarin Chinese, and I also have an intermediate-level knowledge of Arabic.