Office: 215 Bentley Annex

Office Hours: Spring Semester, 1-2 PM Tuesdays and Thursdays, and by appt. (please email. budget cuts = no office phone.)

E-mail:: kendhamm [at] ohio [dot] edu

Mailing Address: 266 Bentley Annex, Department of Political Science, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701

Follow @Kendhammer

"Kendhammer retails libelous generalizations...is unarmed in the battle of ideas...resort[s] to the intellectual equivalent of thuggery...displays an embarrassing lack of a grasp of the facts on the ground in the Middle East...[engages in] stifling intellectual conformity [and] shallow propagandizing..."

-Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, leaders of an anti-Muslim organization identified as a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Brandon Kendhammer is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of International Development Studies at Ohio University. He holds a B.A. in French and political science from Coe College and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His research and teaching interests are in the area of Nigerian politics, political Islam, and ethnic politics. His first book, Muslims Talking Politics: Islam, Democracy, and Law in Northern Nigeria, was published in 2016 by the University of Chicago Press; it explores the emergence of popular demands for the expansion of Islamic law in new Muslim-majority democracies. His second, Boko Haram (co-authored w/Carmen McCain), was published in 2018 by Ohio University Press; it is an accessible social history of the Boko Haram insurgency and its impact on Nigerian politics, society, and popular culture. His most recent work focuses on the perils of ethno-religious powersharing in uncertain African democracies and the challenges of “countering violent extremism” (CVE) policy in West Africa.

Dr. Kendhammer has lived and conducted research in Cameroon and Nigeria, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Nigeria in 2007-08, based at Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto. His work has appeared in many academic journals, including Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Comparative Politics, Journal of Human Rights, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. He is also the co-author of a USAID-funded report on countering Boko Haram’s violent extremism in northern Nigeria and a USIP-funded report on violent extremism and higher education in Cameroon. He speaks regularly on these subjects to government and international media.