Kaitlyn Robinson is an America in the World Post-Doctoral Fellow at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in 2022. Her research analyzes how terrorist, rebel, and insurgent groups emerge and evolve in armed conflict.

Kaitlyn’s book project explores the role that foreign states play in organizing and strengthening new armed groups to serve as their proxies. In other work, she studies the internal politics and processes of armed groups, examining how splintering and leadership dynamics affect group behavior. For her research, Kaitlyn has collected original data and conducted field interviews in Thailand and Myanmar with rebel group leaders. 

Kaitlyn is a research affiliate of the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) and helps manage the Mapping Militants Project (MMP). Her most recent work with MMP and NCITE has analyzed the organizational development of far-right groups operating in the United States and abroad.

Kaitlyn is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and she served as a 2020-2021 junior scholar in the International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network. From 2015-2016, she worked at the U.S. Department of Defense in the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies.