Content by Kat Robison

Kathryn Robison is a Ph.D. student and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Political Science at The University of Alabama. She is originally from Raleigh, NC and grew up in a Southern Baptist family. Her research centers on the use of social media in the fields of science, politics, and religion. She is especially interested in science communication and the political sphere, and how science is used in political communication and policy making. Kat holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies from The University of Arizona, and a M.A. in American Studies from Youngstown State University. She originally intended to pursue graduate study in Biological Anthropology with a focus on the evolution of bipedal locomotion, but after several contentious interactions with people from her faith community about her decision to study evolution during her undergraduate career, she became interested in the public perception of and conversation about science – ultimately choosing to pursue those questions as a graduate student instead.

Outside her life as a Ph.D. student, Kat is a contributor to the space industry news podcast, Talking Space and travels to as many launches as possible. She is a poet, and an occasional blogger for Geek Girls Night Out. Kat enjoys yoga, traveling, and learning new languages. She studied at The University of Botswana in Gaborone, Botswana as a Benjamin A. Gilman Scholar in 2009, and was awarded a 2015 Critical Language Scholarship for intensive summer language study of Turkish in Ankara, Turkey.