Dr. Katherine M. Robiadek

Katherine M. Robiadek is a political theorist whose research focuses on the role of imagination in works by early modern political thinkers. Her book manuscript, A Renaissance of Imagination, examines imagination in the respective political epistemologies of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Cervantes, and Spinoza. She also works on contemporary civic education and democratic leadership, serving as an advisory board member for the National Survey of Student Leaders now housed at The University of Akron’s Bliss Institute. Her research has been supported by institutions like Chicago’s Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies and, in 2021, she won the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference’s Carl S. Meyer Best Paper by an Emerging Scholar Prize.

Robiadek is an active member of scholarly organizations including the American Political Science Association and the National Capital Area Political Science Association, which she will soon chair. She holds a political theory Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at The University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a minor in Early Modern Studies and a graduate certificate in European Studies. Before beginning her academic career, she worked in nonprofit grants management, participated in the Teaching Assistant Program in France, and served as a literacy volunteer with unhoused youth in Spain as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. She likes to run trails, visit parks, read poetry, and frequent arts events.