Michael Woldemariam is a nonresident senior fellow with the Africa Center. He is an associate professor and the PhD program director in the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and a senior fellow at the Center for International & Security Studies at Maryland. Woldemariam’s teaching and research interests are in African security studies, with a particular focus on armed conflict in the Horn of Africa. Woldemariam’s scholarly work has been published in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals, and his popular essays have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Current History. His first book, Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and Its Discontents, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2018. In addition to his scholarly work, Woldemariam has consulted with a number of international organizations, primarily on issues related to politics, governance, and security in the greater Horn of Africa region. He holds a BA from Beloit College, and MA and PhD degrees from Princeton University.
Prior to joining the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, Woldemariam was a faculty member at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies and the director of its African Studies Center. He has also worked as a research specialist with Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies program, as a senior advisor at the US Institute of Peace, and held fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Penn State’s African Research Center. In 2020-21, Woldemariam served on the Democratic staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee through a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship.