Keith Brown

Keith Brown is Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. In 2025-26 he held the Fulbright Finland Bicentennial Chair in North American Studies at the University of Helsinki.  He also spent 2021-22 as a Core Fellow at the Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki. He holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago and a BA in classics from Oxford University. His work focuses on history, culture and politics in the Western Balkans, with a particular emphasis on 20th century Macedonia. He has spent extended time in the region, and his published works include The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation (Princeton University Press, 2003) and Loyal Unto Death: Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia  (Indiana University Press, 2013).  

From 2017-2025 he served as Director of ASU's Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies, leading the Center to recognition as a National Resource Center (NRC) by the US Department of Education in 2022.  Keith extended the Melikian Center's international collaborations, including strengthening university partnerships in North Macedonia and Armenia, and adding study abroad opportunities for foreign language and area studies in Latvia, Uzbekistan, Turkey and Montenegro.  Domestically, the Center partnered with Tempe Sister Cities, Maricopa Community Colleges, the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations and Arizona National Guard to increase Arizonans' awareness of the post-Soviet world and its global significance.

As well as the awards identified above, Brown has received fellowships or grants for research and training from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Defense Language and National Security Education Office, the US Russia Foundation, the US State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the National Endowment for the Humanities, IREX, Fulbright, the Charles Mott Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the National Council on Eurasian and East European Research, the United States Institute of Peace, the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, the Social Science Research Council and the British Academy. 

Prior to joining ASU in 2017, Keith worked at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the University of Wales Lampeter, and Bowdoin College.