Basak Kus Is MPIfG Scholar in Residence 2024

This year’s Scholar in Residence is Basak Kus, Associate Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, who joins the MPIfG in March for a four-month stay. Kus teaches and writes about the interplay between the state, capitalism, and democracy, particularly in the United States, and how governments respond to crises and risks across fields such as finance, climate change, and national security. Her work has explored themes including economic crises, liberalization reforms, the welfare state, financialization, and debt. Kus recently finished a book on the evolving relationship between the state and finance in the US since the early 1970s, Disembedded: Regulation, Crisis, and Democracy in the Age of Finance (Oxford University Press, 2024), with a particular focus on the financial crisis in the US and ensuing political events. Each year, a leading scholar from the field of political science, economics, or social science is invited to Cologne as Scholar in Residence to work on a research project that coincides thematically with research at the MPIfG.