I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Studies in the School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Before joining the faculty at IU, I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Austin Peay State University for two years. I was born and raised in Minnesota, attended graduate school at Arizona State University (M.A. in Political Science), lived in South Korea teaching English as a Second Language for a year, and completed my PhD in Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
My research agenda examines how political groups use different tools and strategies to influence policies and attitudes in their countries in a globalizing world. Such tools include social movement strategies such as protests and campaigns and the interactions between social movements and news media that influence attention to issues through framing and agenda setting. While my area of specialization is comparative politics, my research tends to be interdisciplinary. I rely on my Human Rights and Women’s and Gender Studies specializations and pull from many subfields of political science as well as sociology to inform my research.
Some of my current research focuses on how social movements engage with social media technologies as they work toward their goals, and I am particularly interested in how social movement organizations frame issues related to women’s reproductive rights on these platforms, as well as how they strategize to garner attention to their cause in other ways through these platforms.
In the course of conducting research for my dissertation, I had the opportunity to do fieldwork in Ireland and South Korea thanks to grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council (as a recipient of the Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship), the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Political Science Department, and the UNL Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Program. The experience of doing fieldwork was pivotal for me both personally and academically and has influenced the way in which I teach my courses.
In teaching my courses, I enjoy providing students with opportunities for active learning through activities such as organized debates and simulations that incorporate both concepts from class readings and current events. I also employ a wide variety of materials in the classroom, from traditional text books or academic books and articles to novels and comic books. The variation in the types of activities and materials we use in class speaks to many different student learning styles and helps simulate experiences in the classroom that help students connect course content to their daily lives. These connections are important to critical thought and create a collaborative learning environment that is beneficial.
Please feel free to contact me and/or view my curriculum vitae, available on this website.
Concentrations/Research Interests
Comparative Politics: Social movements, political communication (especially framing), women’s rights and gender issues, human rights, Irish politics, Korean politics.
Political Theory: Feminist theory, power, J.S. Mill
Selected Publications:
Hunt, Kate and Mike Gruszczynski. (Forthcoming). “Going Viral: The Dynamics of Attention to Social Movements.” Information, Communication & Society.
Hunt, Kate. (Forthcoming). “Twitter, Social Movements, and Claiming Allies in Abortion Debates.” Published online August 2019 in Journal of Information Technology & Politics.
Hunt, Kate, and Mike Gruszczynski. (Forthcoming). “The Ratification of CEDAW and the Liberalization of Abortion Laws.” Published online October 2018 in Politics & Gender.
Hunt, Kate. 2019. “Zombies, Gender, and Student Active Learning.” Journal of Political Science Education 15(1): 49-63.
Hunt, Katherine. 2013. “J.S. Mill’s Feminism and the Third Dimension of Power.” Journal of Research in Gender Studies 3(1): 30-52.
Contact Information:
email: huntkate@iu.edu
alternative email: katherineelhunt@gmail.com
Kate Hunt, Ph.D.
Department of International Studies
Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
Kate Hunt, PhD 
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