2017 Featured Speakers

APSA Presidential Address and Reception
Thursday, November 9, 2017
12 noon to 2:00 p.m.

APSA President-elect, Kathleen Thelen will deliver the Presidential Address.

Kathleen Thelen

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
APSA President, 2017-2018

Kathleen Thelen is Ford Professor of Political Science at MIT. Her work focuses on the origins and evolution of political-economic institutions in the rich democracies. Her two most recent books are Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity (Cambridge, 2014), and Advances in Comparative Historical Analysis (with James Mahoney, Cambridge 2015). Her awards include the Barrington Moore Book Prize (2015), the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award of the APSR (2005), the Mattei Dogan Award for Comparative Research (2006), and the Max Planck Research Award (2003). She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in 2009. She received an honorary degree at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (2013).

Thelen is currently President-elect of the APSA and has served the Association in a number of roles: APSA Treasurer (2013-15), President of APSA’s Comparative Politics Section (2011-13), Chair of the Council for European Studies (2002-2006), President of the APSA Section on Politics and History (2007-2008), as President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (2008-2009). She is General Editor, along with Eric Wibbels, for the Cambridge University Press Series in Comparative Politics, and a permanent external member of the Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung in Cologne, Germany.