About

Dr. Christine Carpenter is a Clinical Associate Professor of Leadership at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with over two decades of experience in private practice, focusing on the conscious and unconscious dynamics that influence interpersonal behavior. Her expertise includes group process and relational development, and she has led long-standing interpersonal process groups for individuals and couples. Dr. Carpenter has facilitated numerous training groups through the Great Lakes Group Psychotherapy Society, where she currently serves as president. Her work emphasizes the power of group work to catalyze personal and professional growth, which informs both her clinical and academic practice. In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Carpenter founded Evolve Dating in 2013, a coaching practice supporting high-achieving individuals seeking meaningful romantic partnerships, bridging psychological insight with practical relational strategies. Since co-facilitating the inaugural quarters of the Interpersonal Dynamics program at Chicago Booth in 2019, she has advanced from Adjunct Assistant Professor to Clinical Associate Professor in 2023, and then to Clinical Professor in 2025. She is known for her engaging teaching style and for cultivating a challenging yet supportive learning environment that fosters deep self-reflection and relational fluency. Dr. Carpenter is also a co-founder of DeepNorth, a leadership coaching practice that provides psychologically grounded experiential development work to executives and senior teams. Her core commitment across her therapy, teaching, and coaching work is to help individuals lead from within with presence, clarity, and purpose.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Economics
• Criminology
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Geography
• Physics
• Political economy
• Law and economics
• Quantum mechanics

Selected publications

• Just follow orders or obey the law? What US troops told us about refusing illegal commands

  2025-11-21

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 4 out of 5 US troops surveyed understand the duty to disobey illegal orders

  2025-08-13

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Ethics of Human Rights Advocacy in the Ukraine War

  Ethics & International Affairs · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Amid Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, the human rights community has understandably focused its attention on human rights violations committed by the Russian state. This has, however, left the human rights implications of the martial law Ukraine has put in place for civilians largely unexamined. This essay highlights the ways Ukraine's travel restriction on “battle-aged” civilian men has harmed three overlapping groups—civilian men, the families of the men (including women and children), and trans and nonbinary individuals—and shows that the restriction runs counter to important principles in international human rights and humanitarian law. It then considers the ethical dilemmas faced by the international human rights community in addressing such harms, and the political psychology of rights advocacy that may explain the tendency to underplay this particular set of human rights issues. Nonetheless, the essay ultimately argues that advocates should hold actors—including and perhaps especially those with which they may sympathize—accountable to the human rights standards to which they have pledged.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The “First daughter” effect: Human rights advocacy and attitudes toward gender equality in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

  PLoS ONE · 2024-07-17 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  International concern for the human rights of Afghan women has spiked since the Taliban consolidated power in Afghanistan in fall 2021. Yet little is known about how to effectively advocate for women's human rights under this new context. We present findings from a random sample of all adult Afghan internet users' attitudes toward peace, security, gender, and human rights and find significant support for women's human rights as a national priority within Afghanistan, even when controlling for other priorities and even among many men and women aligned with the Taliban. Given that men now have much more political power in Afghan society to protect women's rights, we paid particular attention to men's attitudes toward women's human rights. Our evidence from an embedded survey experiment, building on earlier literature from other countries, demonstrates that fathers of eldest daughters are particularly likely to favor prioritizing women's rights when primed to think about the gender of their eldest children. Thus, the human rights and humanitarian community should spend more time and attention engaging with this demographic, and specifically creating marketing and advocacy strategies that encourage men to think about or act on behalf of their eldest daughters.

  PublisherDOI

• The Right to Flee the Dangers of War: Rethinking Ukraine’s Gender-Based Restriction on Civilian Men’s Freedom of Movement

  Human Rights Quarterly · 2024-07-26

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT: Amid Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the human rights community has understandably focused its attention on human rights violations committed by the Russian state, leaving the human rights implications of Ukraine’s martial law on civilians largely unexamined. This article highlights the ways Ukraine’s travel restriction on “battle-aged” civilian men has harmed three overlapping groups: civilian men, families (including women and children), and trans and nonbinary individuals. It then demonstrates that wartime policies such as this one are at odds with several areas of international human rights and humanitarian law: the right to freedom of movement, the right to conscientious objection, and the principle of respect for family life—all of which are meant to be implemented without discrimination on basis of gender. We conclude this type of gender-based law is not justified according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’ rules on derogation in time of national emergencies and emerging customary law and should receive greater attention by the human rights community.

  PublisherDOI

• Data for The “First Daughter” Effect, Human Rights Advocacy and Attitudes Toward Gender Equality in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-03-21

  datasetOpen access

  Data and supplemental materials for the paper "The “First Daughter” Effect, Human Rights Advocacy and Attitudes Toward Gender Equality in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan"

  PublisherDOI

• Acknowledgments

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2021

  • Geography
  DOI

• Weaponized Interdependence and Human Rights

  2021-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• PPS volume 19 issue 3 Cover and Front matter

  Perspectives on Politics · 2021-09-01

  articleOpen access

  Founded in 1903, the American Political Science Association (APSA) is the leading professional organization for the study of political science and serves more than 11,000 members in over 100 countries. With a range of programs and services for individuals, departments, and institutions, APSA brings together political scientists from all fields of inquiry, regions, and occupational endeavors within and outside academe in order to deepen our understanding of politics, democracy, and citizenship throughout the world. The direct advancement of knowledge is at the core of APSA activities. We promote scholarly communication in political science through a variety of initiatives including publishing four distinguished

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Breaking Bad? How Survey Experiments Prime Americans for War Crimes

  Perspectives on Politics · 2020 · 30 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law

  What affects Americans’ sensitivity to international laws and norms on the use of force? A wealth of recent IR literature tackles this question through experimental surveys using fictional scenarios and treatments to explore precisely when Americans would approve of government policies that would violate the laws of war. We test whether such survey experiments may themselves be affecting public sensitivity to these norms—or even Americans’ understanding of the content of the norms themselves. We show that being invited to express a preference regarding war crimes in survey settings has a negative impact on Americans’ understanding of US legal and ethical obligations in war and that reporting previous findings can inflate support for war crimes. We conclude with suggestions for future experimental survey design in international relations and international law.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nahomi Ichino

  University of Florida

  3600 shared

• Samantha Majic

  City University of New York

  3600 shared

• Daniel J. O'Neill

  University of Southern California

  3600 shared

• Erik Bleich

  Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

  3600 shared

• Alexandra Filindra

  3600 shared

• Jennifer Boylan

  3600 shared

• Ruth Berins Collier

  Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

  3600 shared

• Alberto Simpser

  Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México

  3600 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Chicago Booth School of Business

• M.S.

  University of Chicago Booth School of Business

• B.A.

  University of Chicago

Awards & honors

• Distinguished Alumni Award Honorees