Karen Taliaferro, Ph.D.

Faculty

Karen is a teacher and research associate with the John Jay Institute, and a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. Her academic research interests are in natural law and the interplay of religion and politics in international affairs.

A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Karen received bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and French from Marquette University and completed the Witherspoon Fellows Program in 2005. She then served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco for two years. Karen was a John Jay Fellow in 2008. Through the John Jay Institute, she landed an internship at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., where she further cut her teeth on the subject of religious freedom and got an idea for what would become her dissertation.

Upon entering the Ph.D. program in political theory at Georgetown, Karen began work at the affiliated Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. Then she and her husband Carlos moved to Doha, Qatar to keep close to the people and traditions she wanted others to understand. In fall 2015, Karen moved to Princeton University as a postdoctoral research fellow.

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