Today at Brown

Michael Kennedy says his academic life has been defined by a central question: What is the relationship between global transformations and the organization and transmission of knowledge? A sociologist, the new Howard R. Swearer Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies has focused much of this work on post-Soviet Eastern Europe. His current research analyzes the cultural politics of energy security and, more broadly, how knowledge institutions engage the world.

Kennedy comes to Brown from the University of Michigan, where he was most recently the founding director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia and Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, as well as professor of sociology and the Ronald and Eileen Weiser Professor of European and Eurasian Studies. During his 23 years at Michigan, he was also the university’s first vice provost for international affairs and served as the director of several other units including the International Institute.

With his background in administration and his scholarship in globalizing knowledge institutions, Kennedy is poised to expand the Watson Institute’s role as a center for research and teaching on international affairs. “One of the things that makes my job so great is that I get to combine my administrative responsibilities with my intellectual passion — that is, to figure out how it is that the Watson Institute can refine not just its own relationship with academics, with publics, and with policy-makers, but to turn that into an object of inquiry itself,” he said.

In the first instance, Kennedy is focusing on a method for making the Watson Institute’s work transformative. He is already talking with colleagues across the University to explore new interdisciplinary collaborations pursuing the most critical global policy and public questions. “We need to find the mechanism that will allow us to combine competencies in new ways and with consequence ... that will enable us to have the long-term effect that we seek.”

Kennedy is author of 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), along with numerous co-edited volumes, articles, and chapters.

He graduated with a B.A. in sociology and anthropology from Davidson College, and received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina. He has received grants and fellowships from many organizations including the National Science Foundation, American Council for Learned Societies, Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Open Society Institute. He also received four teaching awards at University of Michigan and in 1999 was presented with the Gold Cross of Merit by Polish President Aleksander Kwaniewski, in recognition of contributions to scholarship and education about Poland.

“Whether in the address of enduring concerns for inequality and security, or in the comparison of global flows or the use of new media and information technology, Watson offers a distinctive blend of critical distance and scholarly agility that informs policy-making and public engagement in novel and consequential ways,” Kennedy said. “That tradition inspires.”