The African Studies Association has awarded Mai Hassan the Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize ​for her book Regime Threats and State Solutions: Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

The ASA annually presents the Bethwell A. Ogot Book Award to the author of the best book on East African studies published in the previous calendar. The prize began in 2012 and is named in honor of Prof. Bethwell A. Ogot, a leading Kenyan historian, public servant, and public intellectual, through a generous bequest from the estate of Prof. Kennell Jackson, Jr., of Stanford University.

Hassan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on authoritarian and hybrid regimes, the state, land and violence, and ethnic politics with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa.