Kristen Kao is an Associate Professor with the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. She collects original data through fieldwork, large-n surveys, and experiments in the Middle East, Africa, and increasingly, Europe. Some of her work also employs registry data.

In 2025, Kristen was appointed a Wallenberg Academy Fellow, securing 11.25 million SEK (~1.2 million USD) over 5 years for her project: “Bridging Injustice Gaps: Peace Enhancement After Conflict Ends (BIG PEACE).” She is an affiliated scholar with the Global Scholars Network on Identity and Conflict (GSNIC) at Harvard University and Queens University Belfast as well as the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network. 

Kristen has published work on post-conflict reconciliation, non-state authorities, ethnic politics, and forced migration in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, the American Journal of Comparative Law, and World Development, among others. Her edited volume Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa with Ellen Lust was published with the University of Michigan Press in 2025.

In 2019, her research on post-conflict reconciliation in Iraq won the Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha award for the best paper presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting.

She has been conducting fieldwork-based studies since 2006 across countries as varied as Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Tunisia, Oman, Iraq, Turkey, Malawi, Kenya, Zambia, and Egypt. She has served or is currently serving as an advisor to the United Nations, Carter Center, National Democratic Institute, and the World Bank, and is a country expert for the Freedom House and the Varieties of Democracy Institute. Kristen is also a former Fulbright Scholar in Egypt and Boren Fellow in Jordan and Kuwait. 

In her free time Kristen enjoys playing competitive beach volleyball, cooking (and eating) new types of food, and traveling to new places.