Keith Brown is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in the study of twentieth-century Macedonia, the evaluation of democracy promotion programs; identity politics in diasporic communities; and what the US military learned about culture from its experience in Bosnia and Kosovo.

He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and taught at Bowdoin College and the University of Wales before joining the Watson Institute. He also spent 1999-2000 as a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, and 2005-6 as a visiting fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

His research into how different communities construct history in Macedonia, Greece, and Bulgaria led to his book The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation, as well as a number of articles on the culture, history, and politics of Macedonia. He is also the editor of Transacting Transition: The Micropolitics of Democracy Assistance in the Former Yugoslavia, which came out of ongoing research on the politics of US democracy promotion programs. His other projects focus on identity politics in diasporic communities, and how the U.S. military thinks about culture. He is a co-founder and director of research on the Cultural Awareness and the Military Project at the Watson Institute for International Relations at Brown University