Kathleen Collins

Kathleen Collins is the Arleen C. Carlson Professor in the Department of Political Science and a faculty affiliate in Islamic Studies. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Political Science with a focus on Russia and Eurasia. Collins received her B.A., summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa, with a dual major in Russian Language and Literature and Government and International Studies from the University of Notre Dame. She also studied Uzbek and Turkish in graduate school. She has done extensive field research in Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Russia, the Baltics, and, more recently, Eastern Europe.

Professor Collins is the author of Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge University Press), which won the Central Eurasian Studies Society Award for the Best Book in the Social Sciences on Central Eurasia, 2008. Her second book is Politicizing Islam in Central Asia: From the Russian Revolution to the Afghan and Syrian Jihads (Oxford University Press, 2023). 

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From the Oxford University Press website: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/politicizing-islam-978019768506…;

Politicizing Islam in Central Asia: From the Russian Revolution to the Afghan and Syrian Jihads

A sweeping history of Islamism in Central Asia from the Russian Revolution to the present through Soviet-era archival documents, oral histories, and a trove of interviews and focus groups.

Few observers anticipated a surge of Islamism in Central Asia, after seventy years of forced communist atheism. Muslims do not inevitably support Islamism, a modern political ideology of Islam. Yet, Islamism became the dominant form of political opposition in post-Soviet Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In Politicizing Islam in Central Asia, Kathleen Collins explores the causes, dynamics, and variation in Islamist movements--first within the USSR, and then in the post-Soviet states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic and historical research on Islamist mobilization, she explains the strategies and relative success of each Central Asian Islamist movement. Collins argues that in each case, state repression of Islam, by Soviet and post-Soviet regimes, together with the diffusion of religious ideologies, motivated Islamist mobilization. Sweeping in scope, this book traces the dynamics of Central Asian Islamist movements from the Soviet era through the Tajik civil war, the Afghan jihad against the US, and the foreign fighter movement joining the Syrian jihad.

Reviews:

“All research is important, but some of the works we produce as scholars of Eastern Europe and Eurasia are destined to make very long-lasting contributions to our understanding of states and societies in our region of interest: Politicizing Islam in Central Asia certainly sits in this category of research works. The relevance of this book, most significantly, goes well beyond academia: from now on, when students, journalists or policymakers ask me what to read to make sense of Islam in Central Asia, I will point them to Collins’s latest, masterful book.”  Luca Anceschi, Professor of Eurasian Studies, University of Glasgow, UK, Europe-Asia Studies

"Collins achieves something extraordinary in this masterful and careful analysis of Islamism in Central Asia. Based on years of in-depth interviews, archival materials, and other sources, Collins traces the emergence of Islamist movements, from the moderate and democratic to the radical and militant in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Along the way, she reveals the lived experiences of many Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek religious believers. Without demonizing Islam or sensationalizing Islamism, Collins enriches our understanding of both Soviet and post-Soviet religious repression and its unintended consequences: making Islam more resilient and fostering a religious basis for political opposition. Anyone endeavoring to understand the fabric of modern-day Central Asia should closely read Collins' scholarship." -- Steve Swerdlow, Associate Professor of the Practice of Human Rights, University of Southern California, and former Senior Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch

"Remarkable in scope and depth, drawing on everything from interviews in the Ferghana Valley to jihadi propaganda in multiple languages, Collins' book is a contender for the definitive work on the rise of militant Islamism in Central Asia." -- Thomas Hegghammer, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford University, and author of The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad and Jihad in Saudi Arabia

"A groundbreaking study of Islamism's evolution in Central Asia, Kathleen Collins' remarkable feat of scholarship should be required reading for all serious analysts and observers of this important region. Collins' book offers irrefutable evidence that religious freedom is the best counterterrorism policy." -- Mike Croissant, US government counterterrorism officer (ret.)

"Politicizing Islam covers a lot of ground and is based on a massive amount of sustained original research. Collins traces three waves of Islamist mobilization, each one a response to state repression. Her use of interviews and focus groups allows her to bring society back in into the analysis. She makes a clearly thought-out argument on the basis of impressive research." -- Adeeb Khalid, Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor of Asian Studies and History, Carleton College, and author of Making Uzbekistan and Islam After Communism

"Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- Choice

"Collins frequently writes with great nuance and sensitivity, as in the insightful discussion of sacred authority. Moreover, the book's latter chapters offer a lavishly documented description of post-Soviet Islamic radical movements, the first such comprehensive account to be written." -- Eren Tasar, Journal of Church and State

"This book makes a significant contribution to the study of religion and politics in Central Asia. It avoids simplistic narratives and instead offers a rich, well-detailed account of how civil Islam can evolve into radical Islamist movements under certain conditions. The book's strength lies in its ability to balance historical context with contemporary analysis. Its treatment of radicalisation is particularly commendable-not as an inevitable outcome of religious belief but as a result of repression, economic failure, and governance breakdowns." -- Rana Abhyendra Singh, Religion

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Collins is a recipient of the national Carnegie Scholar Award in 2003, granted to "thirteen scholars chosen for innovative scholarship in education, international development, strengthening U.S. democracy, and international peace and security." She was subsequently awarded the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Award, and numerous grants from the USIP, NCEEER, IREX, the Kellogg Institute, the Templeton Foundation, and other institutions. Collins won the S. M. Lipset Award in a national competition for the best dissertation in Comparative Politics or Sociology. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, at the Davis Center for Russian Research.

Collins believes in using her scholarship, through public engagement, to promote the values of democracy, whether at home or in Eurasia. In addition to her academic research, Collins has worked on projects with or consulted for the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations Development Program, the International Crisis Group, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and Freedom House. She has presented her work to multiple US government agencies, including the Helsinki Commission, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense. She has spoken extensively to the media about Afghanistan and Central Asia, and about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  

Collins has published over two dozen articles in World Politics, Comparative Politics, the Journal of Democracy, Political Research Quarterly, Europe-Asia Studies, other academic and policy journals, and numerous edited book volumes. She has given presentations on her research in Europe, Central Asia, Russia, Turkey, Canada, and across the United States.

Collins conducted extensive field research for her books in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. Her research for two ongoing projects -- on Islamism in the Caucasus, and on military reform in post-communist states -- has involved fieldwork in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland since 2022. Her new study of post-communist military reform originated in her work in Kyrgyzstan in graduate school, on the Partnership for Peace agreement. Collins is examining the intersection of democratic values and ideas, civic nationalism, and the effective adoption of NATO military standards and international norms of military conduct and just war. While she began several years ago by studying obstacles to military reform in Russia, she is now looking at successful patterns of reform in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, and mixed reform efforts in the Caucasus and Ukraine. 

At Minnesota, Collins has taught doctoral and undergraduate courses on Russian politics, Central Asia and the Caucasus, the Cold War, Soviet history and politics, nationalism and ethnic conflict, Afghanistan's wars, Islamist movements and politics across the "Islamic world," Islam and democracy, religion and politics, and the Cold War. Collins was awarded the College of Liberal Arts "Red Motley Teaching Award" in 2024. She teaches freshmen through Ph.D. students, has supervised numerous doctoral dissertations, and has frequently advised visiting scholars from Central Asia.

She has three children who often come to class with her to learn about life and politics outside of Minnesota.