Keith Brown's research has focused primarily on politics, culture and identity in the Balkans, with a particular emphasis on relations between Macedonia, Greece, and Bulgaria. His solo-authored scholarly work has explored the comparative politics of history-writing (The Past in Question, 2003), and analyzed the nature of violence in the making and breaking of community (Loyal Unto Death, 2013).

He has also pursued collaboration across scholarly and professional boundaries in research on civil and military forms of international intervention, especially in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. This has produced edited volumes focused on democracy promotion (Transacting Transition, 2006) and comparative approaches to post-conflict studies (Post-Conflict Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach, 2015; co-edited with Chip Gagnon).  He is co-director of the NEH-funded Dialogues on the Experience of War project at Brown University, 2017-2019.

Following on field, archival, and oral historical research supported by NCEEER and a Fulbright fellowship, he is currently working on a book project on environmental activism in socialist Yugoslavia, and its consequences for democratic culture in the region.