Kathleen Thelen is Ford Professor of Political Science at MIT and Permanent External Member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. As a Faculty Associate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, she co-organizes the Center’s Seminar on State and Capitalism since 1800 with Peter A. Hall. Along with Jacob Hacker, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Paul Pierson, she organizes a Hewlett Foundation Project, Advancing a New Field of American Political Economy.
Thelen has served as President of the American Political Science Association (2017-2018), as Chair of the Council for European Studies (2002-2006), and as President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (2008-2009). She was also President of the APSA Section on Comparative Politics Section (2011-13) and of the APSA Section on Politics and History (2007-2008).
Thelenhas been a Guggenheim Fellow (2025-26), and she was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and to the Berlin-BrandenburgAcademy of Sciences in 2009. She holds honorary degrees at the Free Universityof Amsterdam (2013), the London School of Economics (2017), the EuropeanUniversity Institute in Florence (2018), and the University of Copenhagen (2018).
