"The Emergence and Mobilization of Islamism in the Former Soviet Union: Tajikistan in Comparative Perspective"

Kathleen Collins is associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, where her research interests include political transformation and democratization, Islam and politics, civil and ethic conflict, clan politics, informal institutions, civil society development, and Soviet and post-Soviet political development, especially in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The author of the award-winning Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2006), she is currently completing The Rise of Muslim Politics: Islam and State in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Previously, Collins taught at Dartmouth College and at the University of Notre Dame, where she was a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow. She has consulted widely for policymaking organizations such as the National Bureau of Asian Research, the United Nations Development Program, USAID, and the International Crisis Group. She holds a BA from Notre Dame as well as a PhD from Stanford University.