Martha Coakley is headed to Harvard.
The Democratic attorney general, who last year lost a close gubernatorial race to Charlie Baker, has been chosen as a spring semester resident fellow at the prestigious Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, the institute announced Thursday.
Coakley, who leaves office next week, has been in public service for almost 30 years, serving as attorney general and Middlesex district attorney, and other prosecutorial positions.
In an interview Thursday, she said she expects her new, albeit temporary, gig in academia, which involves a lot of student interaction, to be both challenging and rewarding.
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Fellows develop and lead weekly study groups, participate in dinners, seminars, and other events at the university, and mentor students.
Coakley’s study group proposal is focused on how people can make change happen.
“My idea would be to take a look each week at the way people think change happens,” she said, from court cases to elections. “And try and examine, in this new age of technology, what is really the way we bring about change and lasting change.”
One topic Coakley mentioned as an example: gay marriage.
She said she hoped to work with students looking at not only how the laws on the issue changed, but also the relatively quick fashion in which “cultural norms around marriage equality” shifted.
“If you had asked 30 years ago or even 20 years ago, would we be where we are now, you would have said no,” Coakley said. “Looking at this and having the students talk about it and think about: Why did it occur?”
Fellows, who are given what a spokesman called a “modest stipend,” are encouraged to sprinkle life experiences in their interactions with students.
As attorney general, Coakley filed an early challenge to the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited federal recognition of gay marriage.
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Other topics she may address in the study group include income inequality — something she spoke often about on the gubernatorial campaign trail; and the way technology shifts have raised the profile of some public policy issues, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge raising awareness of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
And Coakley, who said she’s not sure what is next after Harvard, will also have time for exploring other future endeavors.
She said as attorney general, she did not want to begin any conversations that might create the appearance of a conflict of interest.
But as a fellow, she said, she will have some time to figure out what her next step will be.
The four other resident fellows announced Thursday by the Institute are:
■ Former US senator Kay Hagan, Democrat of North Carolina, who lost her reelection bid in November.
■ Christine Quinn, the former speaker of the New York City Council, who lost her bid to be the Democratic nominee for mayor in 2013.
■ Matt Lira, deputy executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during its successful 2014 election cycle, when the GOP won control of the US Senate.
■ Jay Newton-Small, Washington correspondent for TIME magazine.
Joshua Miller can be reached at joshua.miller@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jm_bos.