Profile

Karrie J. Koesel is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, where she specializes in the study of contemporary Chinese and Russian politics, authoritarianism, and religion and politics.  She earned her Ph.D. in 2009 in government from Cornell University and won the 2010 American Political Science Association Aaron Wildavsky Award for the best dissertation on religion and politics.  She is the author of Religion and Authoritarianism: Cooperation, Conflict and the Consequences (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and her work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, The China Quarterly, Post-Soviet Affairs, and the Review of Religion and Chinese Society.  Professor Koesel's research has been supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Fulbright program, the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), the Einaudi Center and East Asia Program at Cornell University, and the University of Oregon.  She is also an associate scholar for the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University, the Under Caesar’s Sword Project at the University of Notre Dame, and a member of the International Diffusion and Cooperation of Authoritarian Regimes research network.

Professor Koesel is currently working on two research projects.  One investigates authoritarian resilience and learning in blocking democratic change at home and abroad.  The second examines how authoritarian regimes attempt to use patriotic education to cultivate popular legitimacy and loyalty among their younger, more contentious generations.