Kimberly's work examines how Black experience in the Soviet Union shaped Black identity, and how the presence of people of color shaped ideas and understandings of race, ethnicity, and nationality policy in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet space.
Her public writing analyzes the linkages of race, foreign policy, and culture in the United States, Russia, and Ukraine. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, the Moscow Times, and the Kennan Institute's Russia File.
B.A., History, Swarthmore College
M.A., Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, Harvard University
Soviet nationality policy
Race and ethnicity in Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and post-Soviet region
African and African Diasporic racial identity and experience in the USSR
Subjectivity in the Soviet Union
The Holodomor and peasant understandings of Soviet power in the countryside
"The Ties That Bind: Black Lives Matter, Ukraine's Euromaidan, and the Realities of European Integration." Krytyka (Ukraine). June 2020. (also available in Ukrainian)
"The Curious Case of Russian Lives Matter." Foreign Policy. July 11, 2020.
"A Voice from the Slavic Studies Edge: On Being a Black Woman in the Field." ASEEES NEWSNET August 2020, vol. 60 no.4
"Yelena Khanga, Belonging, and Blackness in Russia." New York University Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. November 6, 2020.
Communications Advisory Committee Member, Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)
Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN)
Board of Directors, Graduate Student Representative (2021-2023), Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS)
Book Review Co-Editor, H-Net Ukraine