Kathy Powers

Professor Kathy Powers is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico.  She is interested in the nature of institutional authority as well as institutional change and effects. Much of her present research focuses on the design of international institutions and law with respect to human rights, restorative justice, trade, and war. Specifically, she examines the institutional and legal determinants of transitional justice in the form of global reparations efforts following mass human rights violations, the international legal personality of international organizations, and how regional economic institutions that transform into military organizations impact war.

Professor Powers has published her research in diverse venues such as the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Peace Research, International Interactions, Foreign Policy Analysis, the Review of International Studies, and the NAACP Special Edition. The National Science Foundation has supported her research on numerous occasions. She was recently awarded multiple fellowships to conduct research for her book Making Amends: The Institutional and Legal Landscape of Global Reparations while in residency at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Professor Powers is also the 2013 recipient of the UNM New Faculty Teaching Award and the 2010 recipient of the Faculty of Color Teaching Award from The Project for New Mexico Graduates of Color (PNMGC). She holds appointments in the UNM School of Law, Program of Africana Studies, and Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health Policy, as well as in the Department of Government at Georgetown University.