Nicole Watts is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Political Science, where she teaches on comparative politics, Middle East politics, and social movements.  Her research interests include ethnopolitical and national movements, state-society relations, the politics of human rights, and Kurdish politics and mobilization, particularly in Turkey. She is a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London (1992) and the University of Washington in Seattle (2001).

Watts is the author of numerous articles in refereed journals and book chapters, and has published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, New Perspectives on Turkey, and, most recently, Ethnopolitics. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Alternative Routes to Resistance: Kurdish Contentious Politics in Turkey, which examines Kurdish activists’ use of elected office and multi-governmental institutions to challenge Turkish state policies towards Kurds.

In 2006 she also completed a short documentary entitled Campaigning with Osman that she filmed and edited. The film documents a pro-Kurdish election campaign for mayor in Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey. Watts makes regular visits to Turkey and in the fall of 2006 is scheduled to attend a Kurdish conference in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan (northern Iraq).

 Watts also worked as a newspaper reporter from 1991-1994 and wrote regularly for the San Francisco Chronicle until 1998.