Mona Lena Krook

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Mona Lena Krook is a professor of political science and women and gender studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on the adoption and implementation of quotas for the selection of female candidates for political office. This work has been published or is forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science, British Politics, the European Journal of Political Research, French Politics, and Politics & Gender. Her book Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

At Radcliffe, Krook will develop the first comprehensive data set on quota campaigns, with an eye to producing more nuanced analyses of quota adoption and implementation around the globe. She will also, in a separate project, explore the broader impact of quotas, in terms of the types of women who are elected, the pursuit of “women’s interests” in public policy, and the empowerment of female candidates and voters. Both projects will investigate how quotas challenge existing democratic practices and what they might mean for women as a group.

Krook received her PhD from Columbia University. Her dissertation research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. In 2004–2005, she studied at the University of Bristol (United Kingdom) with an Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2008, Krook received the Sophonisba Breckinridge Award from the Midwest Political Science Association, for a paper she coauthored with Diana O’Brien.