Kristen Kao is an Associate Professor with the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Kristen has published work on post-conflict reconciliation, non-state authorities, ethnic politics, and forced migration in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and World Development, among others. Her edited volume Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa with Ellen Lust was published with the University of Michigan Press in 2025. In 2019, her research on post-conflict reconciliation in Iraq won the Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha award for the best paper presented at the American Political Science Association (APSA) annual meeting.
Kristen is an expert in large-n survey methods and experimental design informed by fieldwork and in-depth interviewing. She has been conducting fieldwork-based studies since 2006 across countries as varied as Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Tunisia, Iraq, Turkey, Malawi, Kenya, Zambia, and Egypt. She has served as an advisor to the Carter Center, the National Democratic Institute, and the World Bank, and is a country expert for the Freedom House and the Varieties of Democracy Institute. Kristen is a former Fulbright Scholar in Egypt and Boren Fellow in Jordan and Kuwait.
Kristen Kao is an Associate Professor with the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Kristen has published work on post-conflict reconciliation, non-state authorities, ethnic politics, and forced migration in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and World Development, among others. Her edited volume Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa with Ellen Lust was published with the University of Michigan Press in 2025. In 2019, her research…