Olgahan Cat

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methods at Brown University. I received my Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin in 2025. My research examines the influence of global flows of people, resources, and information in conflict contexts, with a particular focus on public attitudes. I use experimental and quasi-experimental methods to study responses to migration, foreign aid, and other pressing global challenges.

My dissertation, Fleeing (in)voluntarily: How Projected Patriotism Shapes Attitudes Toward Conflict Migrants, introduces the novel concept of Projected Patriotism — the idea that people attribute patriotic obligations to citizens of other countries and judge them accordingly. Unlike existing understandings of patriotism, which center on individuals’ attachment to their own nation, Projected Patriotism shifts the focus outward, capturing how expectations of patriotism are imposed across national boundaries. Using survey experiments in the United States and Turkey, my work challenges the conventional wisdom that conflict refugees are viewed more positively than economic migrants, revisiting longstanding assumptions in the migration literature.

My research has been published in International Studies Quarterly and PNAS Nexus. Information on these papers, along with ongoing projects, can be found here. You can also access my CV here.