Kathleen Kuehnast

Guest Author

Kathleen Kuehnast (@KathKuehnast) is the director of Gender Policy and Strategy at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), where she has worked for more than a decade. As a gender expert, Kuehnast works across policy, practice and scholarship to integrate gender analysis into project design and program implementation. She is the co-author of USIP’s Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (GIFT) and co-editor of the volume, Women and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century.

As a socio-cultural anthropologist, Kuehnast conducted extensive research in Central Asia on the impact of rapid political change on gender relations. Prior to USIP, she spent 15 years as a senior social scientist with the World Bank. Dr. Kuehnast is a recipient of two post-doctorate awards, including the Mellon Foreign Fellowship at the Library of Congress and the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute Fellowship. Kuehnast is the 2015 recipient of the Perdita Huston Human Rights Award of the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area.

She holds a doctorate degree in socio-cultural anthropology from the University of Minnesota and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).