Peter Lewis is the Warren Weinstein Associate Professor of African Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work focuses on economic reform and political transition in developing countries, with particular emphasis on governance and development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

He has written extensively on questions of economic change, democratization, and civil society in Africa; democratic reform and political economy in Nigeria; public attitudes toward reform and democracy in West Africa; and the comparative politics of economic development in Africa and Southeast Asia. His book Growing Apart: Politics and Economic Change in Indonesia and Nigeria is concerned with the comparative institutional basis of economic development.

Dr. Lewis has published several other coauthored and edited books, in addition to articles in World Politics, World Development, the Journal of Democracy, the Journal of Modern African Studies, African Affairs, other journals and numerous book chapters.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy. He has consulted for the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carter Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, Freedom House, USAID, and the World Bank. He received a BA degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and MA and PhD degrees from Princeton University.