Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

Kathryn Kavulich is continuing her education in a graduate program in political science at the University of Virginia. (Courtesy Kathryn Kavulich)

By Dayo Akinwande

It was when Kathryn Kavulich, then a sophomore at Georgetown, decided to add psychology as a second major that she got to meet Dr. Fathali Moghaddam, who has the assignment of approving all new Psychology majors. Initially Kavulich was quite frantic about the meeting.

“I didn't think that a professor would allow me to add a major after having taken only one psychology class,” she says. “Instead, Professor Moghaddam had a conversation with me, asked me if I had an advisor, which I did not; and offered to serve as mine.  I signed up for his Psychology and Literature class the following fall.”

It was a path that led her to sociocultural psychology during her junior year. But upon taking a government class and sociocultural psychology class in the same semester, she soon discovered she had a rare opportunity.

“It became obvious that both classes were approaching many of the same issues, but from different perspectives,” says Kavulich.

She was thus drawn into cross-disciplinary work, and in someone as experienced and worldly as Dr. Moghaddam, she found an ideal tutor. Her work with him, usually centered in Iran’s nuclear program and the involvement of the United States and the European Union, culminated in her senior year. That was when she co-wrote an independent research tutorial exploring the impact of socio-psychological theories on international affairs. 

Her collaboration with Dr. Moghaddam has continued even after her graduation from Georgetown in 2005. Dr. Moghaddam received an invitation to contribute to a chapter in a book, The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and he needed some assistance from Kavulich, who by this time was a research analyst for a consulting company.

“He invited me to contribute to that chapter through our work,” says Kavulich.

Far from done with Kavulich, Dr. Moghaddam summoned her again—this time, for a book he was co-editing that included a chapter that he believed would benefit from a chapter similar to the one they had written for the previous book.

“So, even after graduation, I continued to research and work with him—to contribute that second chapter,” says Kavulich. “And while this project is nearing completion, we have continued to stay in touch and send e-mail to each other regarding noteworthy news that relate to the topic.”

It is an experience that enriches Kavulich as she embarks on a career in international affairs and academia. Her current research is telling: she specifically focuses on interactions between the United States and Iran, and the history and domestic structures of those states, the evolution of terrorism as a function of political culture and psychology, and the factors that enable international humanitarian failings in countries like Rwanda, Srebrenica, Sudan, and Iraq. Now at the University of Virginia in a combined master’s and Ph.D. program in political science, she is applying all that she has learned from Dr. Moghaddam.

“Regardless of where my career takes me, I plan to always draw upon my knowledge of psychology in understanding international affairs and state behavior,” says Kavulich. “I truly believe that psychology plays too little of a role in political science. I plan to change this!”

Hailing from Clifford, a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, Kavulich recently won the University of Virginia’s most prestigious award for graduate study, the Presidential Fellowship. Outside of work and research, she hopes to travel, meet new people, and experience new cultures.

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