Rate My Professor Kathleen Bond

Kathleen Bond is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Binghamton, a position she has held since 2020. Previously, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, from 2010 to 2019. Bond earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from The Pennsylvania State University in 2010, an M.P.P. in International Policy and Development from Georgetown University in 2004, and a B.A. in International Relations and Spanish from Bucknell University in 2002. This educational background provides a robust foundation in political science, international policy, and empirical analysis essential for her scholarly pursuits.

Bond's research centers on sub-national conflict processes, particularly how political and politicized identities influence militant mobilization and patterns of collective contention. Her academic interests encompass contentious collective action and political violence, the role of sex and gender in conflict, mobilization-countermobilization dynamics, measurement and observability challenges in conflict research, and multi-method research designs. She addresses the practical ethics of conducting research in violence-affected environments and explores methodological connections between critical social theory and empirical studies of conflict. Bond's work has been published in prestigious journals including the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Politics, Groups, and Identities, Political Science Research and Methods, and others. Key publications include "Women’s Participation in Violent Political Organizations" (American Political Science Review, 2015, with Jakana L. Thomas), "Rebel Leader Ascension and Wartime Sexual Violence" (Journal of Politics, 2021, with Katherine Sawyer and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham), and "System Justification and the American Alt-Right" (Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2025, with Katherine Sawyer and H. Hannah Nam). She received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Maryland in 2014 and has obtained significant grants, such as the APSA Centennial Center Research Grant (2025-2026), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant (2024-2026), and Carnegie Corporation of New York grant (2020). Bond serves as a faculty affiliate of the Human Rights Institute at Binghamton University, non-resident fellow of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and co-convener of the Advancing Research on Conflict Consortium, contributing to the field's methodological and ethical advancements.