Janine R. Wedel is an American anthropologist and university professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a senior research fellow of the New America Foundation. She is the author of several books and many articles on some key systemic processes of the day. She is the first anthropologist to win the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, an honor typically reserved for political scientists (previous recipients include Samuel Huntington and Mikhail Gorbachev).

Janine R. Wedel writes about governing, corruption, foreign aid, and influence elites through the lens of a social anthropologist. A university professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, Wedel is a pioneer in applying anthropological insights to topics dominated by political scientists, economists, or sociologists. She has an internationally recognized record of innovative scholarly research, and inquiry into current intellectual issues. She has been named a Global Policy Chair at the University of Bath, UK, and a Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Wedel received a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. She writes about governing, corruption, foreign aid, and influence elites through the lens of a social anthropologist. A university professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, Professor Wedel has contributed many articles and opinion pieces to more than a dozen major outlets, including The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Nation, The National Interest, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Salon, The Boston Globe, Washington Times, and Politico.

Wedel has been a pioneer in applying anthropological insights to topics that are typically the terrain of political scientists, economists, or sociologists. After 25 years studying the role of informal systems in shaping communist and post-communist societies, Wedel also turned her attention to the United States, and has identified some parallels. Wedel is co-founder and president of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy formerly known as the Interest Group for the Anthropology of Public Policy. Wedel is co-founder and president of the ASsociation for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP), a section of the American Anthropological Association.