Areas of Interest: Globalizing knowledge institutions and networks, cultural articulation of democracy, peace, and energy security in Europe and Eurasia.
Watson Institute Director Michael D. Kennedy came to the Institute from the University of Michigan, where he had been on the faculty since 1986. Most recently, he was a professor of sociology, the Ronald and Eileen Weiser Professor of European and Eurasian Studies, and founding director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia and the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies. He was Michigan’s first vice provost for international affairs, and served as the director of a number of other units including the International Institute, Center for Russian and East European Studies, Center for European Studies/European Union Center, and Program for the Comparative Study of Social Transformations. Kennedy is also a member of the Social Science Research Council’s board of directors and chair of its executive committee.
Alongside this administrative experience, Kennedy studies knowledge institutions and networks, evident in co-edited volumes, Globalizations and Social Movements: Culture, Power, and the Transnational Public Sphere (University of Michigan Press, 2000) and Responsibility in Crisis: Knowledge Politics and Global Publics (University of Michigan Scholarly Publishing Office, 2004), and numerous articles and chapters. Beyond his work in the sociology of globalizing knowledge, Kennedy is currently researching the cultural politics of energy security in Europe and Eurasia.
This builds on his past scholarship on the cultural and social transformations of Eastern Europe, reflected in two monographs, Cultural Formations of Postcommunism: Emancipation, Transition, Nation, and War (University of Minnesota Press, 2002) and Professionals, Power and Solidarity in Poland (Cambridge University Press, 1991). For his contributions to scholarship and education about Poland, in 1999 Poland’s president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, presented Kennedy with the Gold Cross of Merit.
Kennedy has won grants and fellowships from a number of organizations, including the American Council for Learned Societies, Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, National Science Foundation, and Open Society Institute. At the University of Michigan, he received four awards for teaching. He has taught a wide range of courses, from introductions to sociology and the sociology of martial arts to advanced graduate seminars on social theory, cultural sociology, and global transformations. In 2009, he received the Distinguished Diversity Scholarship and Engagement Award from the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan.
He graduated with a BA in sociology and anthropology from Davidson College, and received a PhD in sociology from the University of North Carolina.
His cv is available here.