Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

Donia Kamel is an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of political economy, economic history, migration, race and ethnicity, and discrimination. Her research examines how legal and institutional classifications shape immigrant integration, identity formation, and economic outcomes, with a particular focus on the classification of Arabs as white in the early-twentieth-century United States. She also works on colorism and algorithmic discrimination in football, and on how peer environments shape educational aspirations and university-track choices. Her broader research agenda examines de jure discrimination and its social and economic consequences, as well as identity and diaspora politics, with a focus on the Arab diaspora in the Americas.

She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the Paris School of Economics in 2026. Before joining the PPE Center, she was a visiting fellow at Boston University and Harvard University.