Dara Kay Cohen is Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Her research and teaching interests span the field of international relations, including international security, civil war and the dynamics of violence, and gender and conflictHer first book, Rape During Civil War (Cornell University Press, 2016), examines the variation in the use of rape during recent civil conflicts; the research for the book draws on extensive fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste and El Salvador. Cohen's second book, Lynching and Local Justice: Legitimacy and Accountability in Weak States, was published in 2020 with Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Elements: Political Economy series.) The book, coauthored with Danielle F. Jung, draws on original survey and focus group data collected during fieldwork in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 

Cohen received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and an A.B. in political science and philosophy from Brown University. Cohen served as a paralegal in the Outstanding Scholars Program in the Counterterrorism Section of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2001-2003. Prior to joining the Kennedy School, she was an assistant professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.