CANTON -- Kristin McKie, assistant professor of African studies and government at St. Lawrence University, was invited by the US State Department to participate in an analytic exchange titled “Presidential Term Limits in Africa” March 13 in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research invited McKie to the exchange, which is designed to solicit the views of nongovernmental specialists to facilitate the exchange of views between these specialists and government officials,” according to a press release from St. Lawrence University.

Before joining St. Lawrence, McKie was a postdoctoral associate with the Yale Program on Democracy at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and a lecturer in political science at Yale University from 2011 to 2012.

Her research explores variations in the development of the rule of law across sub-Saharan Africa, especially relating to rules that constrain executive power.

She is currently completing a book titled “Reining in the Big Men: African Executives and the Rule of Law,” as well as several articles on the subject of term limits.

Her work is based on field research in Uganda and Zambia, which was supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.

McKie will deliver a presentation titled “Explaining variation in term limit adherence across sub-Saharan Africa.”