Research

Dr. Kay’s research engages two primary areas: transnational political economy, with a focus on the political and legal implications of regional economic integration, transnationalism, and global governance, and; transnational culture, centered on how cultural processes work in a globalized world. She is interested in understanding how civil society organizations -- particularly labor and environmental movements, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofits -- respond and adapt to processes of regional economic integration and globalization. Although she is focused on these issues empirically, she is also committed to building theories that transcend individual cases so that we can better understand the relationship between transnational civil society organizations and transnational governance institutions. 

Running through all of Dr. Kay’s work is an interest in addressing a critical yet relatively under-studied dimension of globalization: the possibilities for agency among social movements and civil society organizations in the face of formidable states and global governance structures. Problems of structure and agency are central to sociology, but they have been under-theorized at the transnational level. The question of how to conceptualize and build these theories, and how to integrate them into mainstream analysis of social movements and organizations -- is at the heart of her recent and ongoing research. Dr. Kay has made significant and innovative contributions to theory, including theories related to: new models of transnational political opportunity structures and organizational fields (Kay 2005; 2011); field overlap and its concomitant mechanisms (Evans and Kay 2008, Kay and Evans 2018); field encroachment (Spicer, Kay and Ganz 2019); legal transnationalism (Kay 2011); and most recently, culture in transnational interaction (Kay 2022). Extending and expanding our theoretical models is central to Dr. Kay’s intellectual agenda.