Senior Policy Researcher; Professor of Policy Analysis, RAND School of Public Policy
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Shelly Culbertson is a senior policy researcher at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. Culbertson's research focuses on disaster and post-conflict recovery, immigration and mass migration policy, refugees, global education, and international development. She has led multiple studies about mass migration, with particular focus on education, jobs, security, return conditions, and technology. She is currently coleading a project to develop a spatial and infrastructure vision for the West Bank and Gaza. She led a disaster recovery implementation plan for the U.S. Virgin Islands, sponsored by FEMA, a study on municipal recovery capacities needed for recovery in Puerto Rico, and a study on post-conflict stabilization of Mosul, Iraq after the operations against ISIS. Her international development work has focused on the Middle East. She coled a multi-year effort to advise the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq on improving education and coordinated RAND's project to design programs for the Qatar National Research Fund, which has now awarded over a billion dollars in research grants. She previously served in the RAND Homeland Security Research Division Management team, as associate director of the Disaster Management and Resilience Program and director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, & Security Operations Program (IISO). Prior to RAND, Culbertson worked at the U.S. State Department on Turkey and at LMI Government Consulting. Her commentaries have appeared in Foreign Policy, The National Interest, The Hill, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, and other news outlets, and she has conducted media interviews on MSNBC, NPR, BBC World, and elsewhere. Culbertson is the author of The Fires of Spring: A Post Arab Spring Journey Through the Turbulent New Middle East (St. Martin's Press). She earned her M.P.A. in public policy and international development from the School for Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.
M.P.A. in public policy and international development, Princeton University School for Public and International Affairs; B.Phil. in political science and philosophy, University of Pittsburgh; B.S. in mathematics, University of Pittsburgh
