Kathleen Klaus

I have recently joined the Department of Politics at the University of San Francisco. Previously, I was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University (2017-2018) and a postdoctoral fellow at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University (2015-2017). My research sits at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics, and focuses on political violence, elections, land rights, and forced migration, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. My recent book Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-making (Cambridge University Press, 2020), examines the relationship between land rights and patterns of electoral violence in Kenya. The dissertation on which the book is based won the Best Fieldwork Award from APSA's Comparative Democratization Section and an honorable mention for Best Dissertation in African politics. The book draws on 15 months of multi-method fieldwork that I conducted across Kenya between 2010-2013.