Kathleen Collins is associate professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2000. Collins is the author of Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which won the Central Eurasian Studies Society Award for the Best Book in the Social Sciences on Central Eurasia. She is currently writing a second book: The Rise of Political Islam in Eurasia: State Repression, Ideology, and Islamist Mobilization (under contract, Cambridge University Press). Collins has published articles in World Politics, Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, Political Research Quarterly, Europe-Asia Studies, Asia Policy, and Brown Journal of International Affairs, as well as in edited volumes. Collins’ research and teaching interests include political transition and democratization, Islam and politics, civil and ethnic conflict, clan politics, informal institutions, and Soviet and post-Soviet political development. She has done extensive field research in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Collins has conducted research on persecuted Christian communities in the post-Soviet states of Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

Learn: Christian responses to persecution in Turkmenistan | Uzbekistan