Faculty Profiles

BIO

Pauline Jones is the newly appointed Director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Political Studies, where she is also a Research Professor.

In 2025-26, she was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.

At the University of Michigan (UM), she is also Professor of Political Science and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director for the Michigan in Washington Program.

Previously, she served as the Director of UM’s Islamic Studies Program and International Institute.

She has published articles in several leading academic and policy journals, including the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Current History, Foreign Affairs, International Journal of Public Health, and Security Studies.

She is author (or co-author) of five books: Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts (Cambridge 2002); The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence (Cornell 2003); Oil is not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in the Soviet Successor States (Cambridge 2010), Islam, Society, and Politics in Central Asia (University of Pittsburgh Press 2016); and most recently The Oxford Handbook on Politics in Muslim Societies (Oxford 2021).

Her current research focuses on understanding the reverberating effects of Russia’s war against Ukraine on states and societies in the former Soviet Union and explaining the distinct patterns of religion-state relations across the modern Muslim world.