Kathleen Collins

Kathleen Collins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a faculty affiliate in Islamic Studies. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Political Science with a focus on Russia and Muslim Eurasia. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, at the Davis Center for Russian Research. Collins received her B.A., summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa, with a dual major in Russian Language and Literature and Government and International Studies from the University of Notre Dame. Professor Collins is the author of Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge University Press), which won the Central Eurasian Studies Society Award for the Best Book in the Social Sciences on Central Eurasia, 2008. Her second book is Politicizing Islam in Central Asia: From the Russian Revolution to the Afghan and Syrian Jihads (Oxford University Press). Collins is a recipient of the national Carnegie Scholar Award and the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Award, and numerous grants from the USIP, NCEEER, the Kellogg Institute, the Templeton Foundation, and other institutions. Collins won the S. M. Lipset Award in a national competition for the best dissertation in Comparative Politics or Sociology. In addition to her academic research, Collins has worked on projects with or consulted for the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations Development Program, the International Crisis Group, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and Freedom House. She has presented her work to multiple US government agencies, including the Helsinki Commission, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense. She has spoken extensively to the media about Afghanistan and Central Asia, and about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.