Kevin Koehler

Associate Professor of Political Science | Deputy Director, DIRPOLIS Institute | Principal Investigator, ERC Consolidator Grant MENA-PERC 

Kevin Koehler is Associate Professor of Political Science and Deputy Director of the Institute of Law, Politics and Development (DIRPOLIS) at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies. He is a member of SPIRE – Security, Politics and International Relations. His research examines politics and security in the Middle East and North Africa, with particular emphasis on political elites, regime change, autocratization, civil-military relations, and military coups.

Kevin is Principal Investigator of MENA-PERC: Political Elites and Regime Change in the Middle East and North Africa, a €1,915,601 Horizon Europe European Research Council Consolidator Grant running from 2023 to 2027. He leads a multi-country, mixed-method research programme covering Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey and a team of postdoctoral researchers, and doctoral researchers.

His work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, Security Studies, Democratization, Political Research Quarterly, and other leading journals. As of July 2026, he had published 60 academic outputs, with more than 1,100 citations and an h-index of 18.

Before joining Sant’Anna, Kevin held academic and research positions at Leiden University, the NATO Defense College, the American University in Cairo, King’s College London, and the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. He holds a PhD and an MRes from the European University Institute and an MA in Political Science from the University of Tübingen.

Institutional and professional leadership

Kevin has served as Deputy Director of DIRPOLIS since 2025. He has chaired the Institute’s Working Group on Teaching and the admissions committee for the 42nd cycle of its doctoral programme. He is a board member of the PhD programme and of the joint Sant’Anna–University of Trento MSc in International Security Studies.

At Leiden University, he chaired the MSc Admissions Committee and served as an elected member of the Institute Council. These positions complement his experience leading an EU-funded research team and contributing to academic governance, recruitment, programme development, and international research collaboration.

Kevin is Associate Editor of Mediterranean Politics and a member of the Ethics Advisory Board of the ERC-funded POLARCHATS project. He regularly reviews research for leading journals, academic presses, national research councils, and funding organizations.

Policy and practitioner engagement

Kevin served as Research Advisor at the NATO Defense College from 2016 to 2018 and continues to contribute to its senior-level courses. His policy engagement has included invited contributions to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the NATO Defense College, the Embassy of the Netherlands in Italy, and the Arab Reform Initiative.

He has produced research and analysis for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Carnegie Middle East Center, ISPI, and the Project on Middle East Political Science. He has also contributed public-facing analysis to The Washington Post.