Katya Drozdova

About

Dr. Ekaterina “Katya” Drozdova was a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution from June 2016 to June 2017, longtime participant in Hoover’s Soviet Archives Workshop and Workshop on Authoritarian Regimes, and an associate professor of political science in the School of Business, Government, and Economics at Seattle Pacific University. Professor Drozdova is an affiliate with the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) at Stanford and Princeton Universities as well as a principal investigator for “Mining Afghan Lessons from Soviet Era” (MALSE) research program, which is based on information and documents from Hoover’s Soviet Archives.

An expert on foreign policy, counterterrorism, U.S. national and international security, Dr. Drozdova is the author of Quantifying the Qualitative: Information Theory for Comparative Case Analysis (SAGE, 2016). She has authored numerous articles and book-chapters including the chapter on “Civil Liberties and Security in Cyberspace” in The Transnational Dimension of Cyber Crime and Terrorism (Hoover Institution Press, 2001).

Professor Drozdova’s current research and publications broadly focus on problems of geopolitical strategy, global security and reciprocity in international relations, particularly including American-Russian relations and issues of counterterrorism. Katya has built a long track record in the studies of conflict, with an emphasis on asymmetric low-tech threats in the high-tech age as well as on organizations’ use of their human and technological networks to survive in hostile or otherwise challenging conditions. Her research interests are in understanding how systemic risks and technology choices affect security strategies in diverse contexts: from dealing with great power rivalry and countering terrorist or insurgent networks to securing cyber, energy, and other critical infrastructures.

Dr. Drozdova has previously been a visiting fellow at Hoover from September 2007 through August 2009 and held research appointments at NYU’s Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy, Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and Hoover-CISAC’s Consortium for Research on Information Security and Policy. In addition to academia, Katya’s experience in the private sector has spanned the range from working for a well-established S&P 500 market leader to being the first hired employee of a start-up specializing in defense and technology applications.

Professor Drozdova has earned a PhD and MPhil in Information Systems from New York University’s (NYU) Stern School of Business, Department of Information, Operations, and Management Sciences. Her MA in International Policy studies and BA in International Relations are from Stanford University.