Kathleen Blee

Kathleen Blee is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology within the Social Science faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her BA in Sociology with highest honors from Indiana University in 1974, MS in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976, and PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982. Blee began her academic career at the University of Kentucky in 1981, advancing to full Professor by 1996, during which she served as Director of the Women’s Studies Program (1987-1989) and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (1989-1991 and 1992). She joined the University of Pittsburgh as Professor of Sociology in 1996, was appointed Distinguished Professor in 2007, and holds affiliated appointments in the Departments of History and Psychology, the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program, and the Center for Race and Social Problems. Administratively, she directed Pitt’s Women’s Studies Program (1996-2001), chaired the Department of Sociology (2008-2011), served as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research (2012-2017), Senior Associate Dean (May-August 2017), and Bettye J. and Ralph E. Bailey Dean of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and College of General Studies (2017-2023).

Blee’s research focuses on social movements, particularly racist, anti-Semitic, and far-right movements in the U.S. and Europe, racial violence, gender, and microsociology. Her ongoing projects include a funded prospective study of white supremacist disengagement with Pete Simi and Matthew DeMichele, and an ethnography of spatial and cultural factors in urban bus riding interactions. She has published nine books, including Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (1991, Pulitzer Prize nominee), The Road to Poverty (2000, co-authored), Inside Organized Racism (2002), Democracy in the Making (2012, Charles Tilly Award and Virginia Hodgkinson Prize), Women of the Right (2012, co-edited), Understanding Racist Activism (2018), and Out of Hiding (2024, co-authored), alongside over 100 journal articles and chapters. Her scholarship has earned the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award (2004), Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2007), Provost’s Mentoring Award (2007), Pennsylvania Sociological Society Distinguished Contribution Award (2006), John D. McCarthy Lifetime Achievement Award (2016), and Eastern Sociological Society Robin M. Williams Lectureship (2017). Funded by NSF, DOJ, and others, Blee advises the Center for Research on Extremism (C-Rex) in Oslo and consults pro bono for government, civic, and religious organizations on violent extremism.

Professional Email: kblee@pitt.edu