not in residence

Research Interests
non-use of biological agents as weapons of warfare

Carol Atkinson was a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. She retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force in 2005. While in the military she served in a wide variety of management and operational positions in the fields of intelligence, targeting, and combat assessment. During the Cold War she flew on the Strategic Air Command's nuclear airborne command post as a target analyst. During Operation Desert Storm (1991) she worked on the intelligence staff in Riyadh, and, subsequently, on the contingency planning staff in Dhahran/Khobar, Saudi Arabia. While in the military, she taught at the Air Force Academy and the Air Force's Command and Staff College.

Atkinson holds a PhD in international relations from Duke University, an MA in geography from Indiana University, and a BS from the United States Air Force Academy (5th class with women). She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Atkinson's primary research focuses on U.S. military-to-military contacts as channels of international norm diffusion. She is also working on a project examining the influence of educational exchange programs on democratization and a project on the social construction of the biological warfare threat in the United States.