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Social Sciences Division
Politics Department
PhD
Faculty
Regular Faculty
Merrill College Faculty Office Annex
164
Winter 2025 by appointment. Please book here: https://calendly.com/kitait/winter-2025-office-hours
Merrill/Crown Faculty Services
BA, John Jay College (CUNY), Political Science
PhD, University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Political Science
Law and Society, Human Rights, Legal Mobilization, Comparative Law and Courts, Comparative Constitutionalism
In her research, Dr. Tait explores the ways ordinary people encounter laws and institutions to improve their material reality. Dr. Tait is committed to studying the meanings people make about the law, rights, and state institutions to assess the political actions people can and do take to improve their material conditions in light of these laws and rights.
Her research agenda's ultimate goal is to assess the embeddedness of the principles housed in the law and rights in everyday people's consciousness as they grapple with everyday sociopolitical challenges. While South Africa is her primary area of expertise, Dr. Tait has a broader interest in new democracies in the Global South.
In her current book project, she explores ordinary Black South Africans' perceptions of the law and how they impact their views of the desirability and appropriateness of appealing to courts when they have problems accessing constitutionally guaranteed services. This book relies on 12 months of fieldwork in South Africa.
2021 Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow University of California, Irvine Department of Criminology, Law and Society
2019 Three-Minute Thesis Competition Winner and People’s Choice Award, UMass Amherst
2018 Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, Law and Social Sciences Program, National Science Foundation
2018 U.S. Fulbright Student Award, Institute for International Education
2017 Fulbright-Group Project Abroad Fellowship in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Willoughby-Herard, Tiffany, Takiyah Harper-Shipman, Kira Tait, Robin Turner, and Tara Atherley. 2025. “Transforming Political Science: Founding The Transnational Black Womxn Scholars of African Politics Research Network.” In Disrupting Political Science: Black Women Reimagining the Discipline edited by Angela K. Lewis-Maddox. Albany, NY: State University of New York (SUNY) Press.
Tait, Kira, and Whitney K. Taylor. “The Possibility of Rights Claims-Making in Court: Looking Back on Twenty-Five Years of Social Rights Constitutionalism in South Africa.” Law & Social Inquiry, 2022, 1–30. DOI:10.1017/lsi.2022.63.
Andrew Enaifoghe, Tafadzwa C. Maramura, Harris Maduku, Israel K. Ekanade, Hannah Muzee, and Kira Tait. 2020. “Africa’s Underdevelopment amidst Global Pressures: Is Good Governance Attainable?” Journal of African Foreign Affairs (JoAFA) 7(3): 31-53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31920/2056-5658/2020/v7n3a2
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