Robert Kirsch is a political theorist with an interdisciplinary lens. His work focuses on multiple vectors of citizenship in advanced industrial democracies, in particular theories of sovereignty, heterodox rationalities of political economy, and Frankfurt School critical theory in its "first generation" and their integration into American Institutionalism, particularly Veblen and Mumford.
Kirsch is also a Principal Investigator on an NSF grant to increase faculty diversity in the geosciences. His work in this area uses small group theory to develop change leaders who are able to overcome institutional inertia and change departmental culture.
Kirsch is membership director for the Caucus for a New Political Science, and a member of Green Politics and Theory, the International Leadership Association, the International Herbert Marcuse Society, and the International Confederation for the Application of Pluralism in Economics