Professional Affiliation

Arizona State University

Expert Bio

Kathleen M. Vogel, Ph.D. is Professor and Deputy Director, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University. Her research focuses on socio-technical assessments of biosecurity threats.  Her work has also studied knowledge production in weapons assessments in U.S. intelligence and collaboration between academia and the intelligence community.  Previously, she has served as a William C. Foster Fellow and a Jefferson Science Fellow in the U.S. Department of State.  She holds a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from Princeton University. Her publications include “Interdisciplinary, Cross-sector Collaboration in the US Intelligence Community: Lessons Learned from Past and Present Efforts,” (Intelligence and National Security, vol. 34, no. 6;  2019),  “Bringing the National Security Agency into the Classroom: Ethical Reflections on Academia-Intelligence Agency Partnerships,” Science and Engineering Ethics vol. 25, iss. 3; 2019), and “Tacit Knowledge, Secrecy, and Intelligence Assessments: STS Interventions by Two Participant-Observers," Science, Technology, and Human Values vol. 45, iss 5; 2018).

Wilson Center Project

"Expertise, Secrecy, and Intelligence Assemessments"

Project Summary

This project will create a new unclassified dialogue between nongovernmental experts and intelligence analysts focused on issues of expertise and secrecy in intelligence assessments on weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The project will form unclassified study groups that will examine how WMD assessments can involve an integrated synthesis of social and technical factors, drawing on important sources of unclassified information and methodologies.  One study group will examine bioweapons technologies; the other will examine nuclear weapons technologies.  The goal of these study groups is to discuss new, unclassified, multidisciplinary social science approaches to studying WMD problems that can be useful to intelligence assessments.  This proposed project aims to provide information and expertise to improve the accuracy of WMD assessments in order to better inform U.S. national security policymaking.

Major Publications

• Vogel, Kathleen M., Biothreats and Policy Logics, forthcoming by Johns Hopkins University Press.

• Vogel, Kathleen M. and Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, “The Social Context Shaping Bioweapons (Non)Proliferation,” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science, vol. 8, no. 1 (March 2010): 9-24.

• Vogel, Kathleen M., “Iraqi Winnebagos of Death:  Imagined and Realized Futures of U.S. Bioweapons Threat Assessments,” Science and Public Policy, vol. 35, no. 8 (October 2008): 561-573.

• Vogel, Kathleen M., “Framing Biosecurity:  An Alternative to the Biotech Revolution Model?” Science and Public Policy, vol. 35, no. 1 (February 2008): 45-54.

• Vogel, Kathleen M., “Bioweapons Proliferation:  Where Science Studies and Public Policy Collide,” Social Studies of Science, vol. 36, no. 5 (2006): 659-690.