Alexander Cooley is a scholar of international relations whose research examines global authoritarianism, transnational kleptocracy, and the changing international order. His regional expertise centers on Eurasia, particularly Central Asia and the Caucasus, where he has studied how external powers shape governance, sovereignty, and political development in the post-Soviet states.

He is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College. At Columbia, he served as Director of the Harriman Institute for the Study of Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe from 2015 to 2021, and as Barnard's Vice Provost for Research and Academic Centers from 2022 to 2025. He currently chairs the Faculty Advisory Board of the Columbia Global Center in Athens and serves on the executive committees of the Harriman Institute and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, as well as the Committee on Global Thought.

Beyond the Columbia community, he serves as Chair of the American University in Central Asia Foundation. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow for Eurasian Affairs at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Nonresident Fellow at the Kennan Institute, and an Academy Adjunct Fellow at the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership at Chatham House.

Cooley is the author or co-author of eight books, including Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (Yale 2017, with John Heathershaw), Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford 2020, with Daniel Nexon), and Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics (Oxford 2025, with Alexander Dukalskis).

His commentary regularly appears in Foreign Affairs and other current affairs publications and he has testified before the United States Congress and the Helsinki Commission. His research has been supported by the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He holds an MA and PhD from Columbia University.