Carolyn Warner

Carolyn M. Warner is a professor of political science in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. Warner’s research and teaching areas are religion and politics, the military, and the political economy of corruption in the global political economy. As of July 1, 2019, she will be the Vail Pittman Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University Nevada Reno.

Current research includes a project on the politics of sex abuse in the military and in the Catholic Church in the U.S., Australia and the U.K., with further comparision to France, a National Science Foundation funded project on the role of religion in asymmetric conflict (approximately $1 million, PI). She is  co-PI on a nearly $1.8 million grant led by PI Adam Cohen (ASU Department of Psychology) about culture.  She has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University and a Visiting Professor at Harvard University.  

She was co-director, with Professor Linell Cady, of a Luce Foundation-funded project, “Religion and International Affairs: Through the Prism of Rights and Gender”. The program included a two-year interdisciplinary faculty seminar, public speakers, policy-makers in residence, seed grants, and new graduate seminars.  

Her book, The Best System Money Can Buy: Corruption in the European Union, was published with Cornell (2007) and was selected as a Choice Magazine "Outstanding Academic Title" in 2008. She is author of Confessions of an Interest Group: the Catholic Church and Political Parties in Europe, (Princeton 2000), and lead author of Generating Generosity in Catholicism and Islam: Beliefs, Institutions and Public Goods Provisions (Cambridge 2018). She has published a number of articles in various journals.

Currently she serves as one of the two Associate Directors in the School of Politics and Global Studies, in charge of the graduate programs in Political Science and in Global Security. She served as faculty head/coordinator of the political science faculty from 2009-2013, and has served on the ASU University Promotion and Tenure Committee and on the CLAS Dean's Faculty Advisory Council.

She is an Inaugural Fellow in the PLuS Alliance, a tri-lateral research and teaching alliance between ASU, King's College London and the University of New South Wales. Warner is an active member of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture, and a regular participant in the Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics and Society's annual graduate workshop. She is a faculty affiliate with ASU's Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, ASU's Center on the Future of War, the Gendered Violence Research Network, and the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies.

Her commentary on the Catholic church and clergy child sex abuse was featured on National Public Radio, at 

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/04/644667657/has-catholic-canon-law-aggravated-the-clergy-abuse-crisis

and https://www.npr.org/2018/09/04/644617921/pennsylvania-grand-jury-investigation-into-clergy-sex-abuse-may-set-new-preceden

Findings from earlier work on religion and politics are briefly described in the Washington Post "Why give to charity? What Muslims and Catholics have in common,”  and in ASU Now: " Does religion turn weak groups violent?." 

She is proficient in French and Italian.