Dr. Kristin McKie

Kristin McKie is a member of both the Government Department and the African Studies Program at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY.  She received her Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University in 2012. Before coming to St. Lawrence, Dr. McKie was a Postdoctoral Associate with the Yale Program on Democracy at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Yale University from 2011-2012. During the 2015-2016 Academic year, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.  Prior to pursuing her PhD, Dr. McKie worked in the Counterterrorism Section of the U.S. Justice Department as an Honors Paralegal. 

Dr. McKie’s research explores the development of political institutions (both formal and informal) across sub-Saharan Africa, especially relating to rules that constrain executive power and rules that facilitate citizens' access to justice.  Her work is based on field research in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, and has been generously supported by the National Science Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, Studies in Comparative International Development, Africa Today and Social Research, and she is a member of the editorial board of the journal African Security. Recently, she has been invited to speak about her research and the policy implications thereof at the U.S. State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Brookings Institution.

At St. Lawrence, Dr. McKie teaches classes in Comparative Politics, African Politics, Foreign Aid, Political Institutions, Alternative Justice Systems, Representations of Africa, and other topics, many of which are cross-listed between Government and African Studies.

 Originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA, Dr. McKie tries to live life to the fullest by spending her time kayaking and hiking across upstate NY, finding new recipes to try, playing “old lady” softball, practicing yoga, finding deals at consignment shops, making soup, traveling abroad, and reading modern contemporary American and world novels.