Kristin McKie

I am an associate professor of Political Science and African Studies and Chair of the Government department at St. Lawrence University, a selective liberal arts college in Canton, NY.  Before coming to St. Lawrence, I 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, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.  I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Cornell University in 2011 and my BA from Haverford College.  

My research explores the variation in the strength of the rule of law across sub-Saharan Africa, especially relating to the adherence vs. contravention of presidential term limit rules. My scholarship has been has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, Studies in Comparative International Development, Africa Today, and Social Research, and has been supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.  

I am currently undertaking a new project exploring the implementation of the judicial reforms called for in the 2010 Kenyan Constitution, focusing specifically on the efforts to mainstream traditional indigenous dispute resolution systems into the judicial system in order to improve citizens' (especially women's) access to justice.

My research and teaching interests include sub-Saharan African politics, political institutions (formal and informal), constitutionalism/rule of law, justice systems, and foreign aid.