Kathryn is an American professor of law and politics, and is currently the William Voss-Bascom Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She received her Ph.D. the University of California – Berkeley and her J.D. from the University of California – Los Angeles. Her research focuses on legal and economic reform in the former Soviet Union. Following in the Wisconsin “law in action” tradition, her research explores how ordinary Russians experience law.
Her current research explores the role of lawyers in Russia. It is grounded in a 2016 survey of over 2000 law students on the cusp of graduation that was funded by the National Science Foundation. She has published over 10 articles that delve into various aspects of the Russian legal profession. Kathryn is leading a collaborative project on Lawyers and Democratic Decline (LADD). LADD brings together scholars who are studying how lawyers in countries experiencing democratic decline or full-fledged authoritarianism are coping. It includes scholars working on lawyers in Russia, China, Poland, Brazil, and the U.S.