International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council Member

Bridget Welsh

John Cabot University

Bridget Welsh is a visiting professor at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. Previously, she was a professor of political science at Ipek University. She is also senior research associate at the Center for East Asia Democratic Studies at National Taiwan University, senior associate fellow of The Habibie Center in Indonesia and university fellow of Charles Darwin University. She received her doctorate and MA from the department of political science at Columbia University, language training (FALCON) from Cornell University, and BA from Colgate University.

Prof. Welsh has edited and written several volumes on Southeast Asia and East Asia, the most recent of which is Transformations: Abdullah Badawi’s Years in Malaysia. She is also currently working on a number of books that include Democracy Denied: Malaysia’s GE13 and Beyond, Embracing Democracy: How Malaysians Think about Politics, Beyond Ethnicity: Malaysian Voting Behavior, Gender Politics and Elections in Southeast Asia as well as an edited volumes with Yun-han Chu on regime support and in Southeast Asia and youth and democratic citizenship in East Asia based on the Asian Barometer Project. She has also written numerous articles on a range of issues from elections and human rights in Southeast Asia, Islamic parties and democracy to US-Southeast Asia relations and gender politics. She is a contributor to Malaysiakini, the leading news website in Malaysia. She is currently the Malaysia Director of the Asian Barometer Survey Project and the senior advisor to the 2015 Myanmar Asian Barometer Survey. She is also a senior advisor to Freedom House.

Prof. Welsh has taught courses at Hofstra University, the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where she received the 2009 Max Fisher Teaching Excellence Award, and Singapore Management University, where she was awarded the 2011 Distinguished Teacher Award in the School of Social Sciences. She was a Henry R. Luce Southeast Asian Fellow at the Australian National University. Prof. Welsh is the former Chair of the Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Studies Group.