Kārkliņa grew up in Germany, where her father Ādolfs Šilde was a diplomatic representative of Latvia.

[4] In 1980 she joined the political science faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she worked until 2008, and became Professor Emerita.

[5] Beginning in 2006 Kārkliņa was again a visiting professor at The University of Latvia, where in 2010 she oversaw research endowed by the European Social Fund.

[5] In her research as an academic political scientist, Kārkliņa specializes in Baltic studies, democratization particularly in Eastern European countries, and democracy and civil society in Latvia.

[4] In 1994, she wrote the book Ethnic Politics and Transition to Democracy: The Collapse of the USSR and Latvia.