Who we are
Patricia J. Sohn, Ph.D., is Visiting Faculty, Kathmandu University—Nepal Centre for Contemporary Studies (KU-NCCS), Nepal. She is co-editor of Beyond the Death of God: Religion in 21st Century International Politics (University of Michigan Press 2022); and author of Judicial Power and National Politics: Courts and Gender in the Religious-Secular Conflict in Israel (SUNY Press, Second Edition 2017; First Edition 2008). Her dissertation was third runner up for the Association for Israel Studies Dissertation Award, 2002, and was published by ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2001. She is published in Political Research Quarterly, where she has a co-edited special issue; Field Methods; Droit et Société; Studies in Law, Politics, and Society; Religions; other journals; and has chapters in top university press volumes. She has been Guest Editor for a special issue of Religions on religion, politics, ritual, and political theatre in comparative-historical and international perspective (closed January 15, 2026, but still in process). She was Curator (guest editor) of an influential blog for E-International Relations (2016-2019) and was briefly an unfunded series editor for Academic Studies Press.
She has received national fellowships: National Science Foundation, Law and Social Sciences Dissertation Grant 1999; and three awards or scholarships from the Social Science Research Council, NY, IDRF, NMERTA, and a special topics competitive dissertation workshop, and other awards. She was Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University (1.5 years in 2003-2004). She served on the Fulbright National Committee four times (as Woods or Sohn), and other professional service.
Her current research centers upon culture and institutions; religion and politics; ritual politics and political theatre; qualitative methods; perspectival politics in Asian popular film and television; and new and developing interests in media studies, political communication, and political phenomenology. She is published, and awards can be found, under her maiden name, Patricia J. Woods, up to 2017.
Dr. Sohn is interested in comparative and international political sociology (in political science or sociology); historical institutionalism with an emphasis on culture and institutions; qualitative, field, and political-ethnographic methods, grant writing, and analytical reading and writing for social sciences; or other positions emphasizing social science research with some attention to discursive methods, patterns of experience as found in in-depth interviews, and related methods of analysis from the humanities. Amongst political institutions, her greatest expertise is in the judiciary with some interest in bureaucracy and theories of the state. She has conducted in-depth interviews on questions of gender, ethnic, religious, and judicial politics. She is open to considering consultantships. She is most interested in positions in Asia or the U.S.
She was Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida from 2010-2025, and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida from 2001-2010.
She has been a Visiting Scholar as either faculty or doctoral student in departments of Political Science; Sociology and Anthropology; International Studies; Political Sociology (Visiting Fellow, GAPP-ENS-Cachan, France, 2004); a College of Law (Birkbeck, London, England, 2004); in addition to the Center for Middle Eastern Studies already mentioned. The current position at Kathmandu University is in political sociology and international studies. It includes teaching in international and political communications and media; qualitative, field methods, and social sciences in American English; and guest lectures in epistemologies and analytical social science reading in American English at undergraduate and all graduate levels.
Her Ph.D. is in Near and Middle East Studies — Modern Middle East Politics track — with an emphasis on politics, society, culture, and languages (University of Washington, Seattle, 2001). Her B.A. and M.A. are in Religions (Islam and Judaism, University of Florida, 1989 and 1991, respectively). Her doctoral qualifying exams were in: Middle East, Comparative Politics, Ethnicity and Nationalism, and Gender and Women (comparative and international).
