Sofia Fenner joined the faculty at Colorado College in 2020. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago (2016), where she focused on both comparative politics and political theory. Her research is concerned with the interactions of regimes, states, and societies, especially in authoritarian systems. Her current book project,Life after Co-optation, explores how two North African political parties (the Wafd in Egypt and the Istiqlal in Morocco) were damaged by authoritarian co-optation but nevertheless managed to survive. Drawing on the histories of these two parties, she finds that co-optation has much more to do with discourse and much less to do with material transactions than dominant theories claim. Sofia's teaches courses on Middle East and global politics that emphasize local voices, the politics of storytelling, and the importance of context and history.
