Kimi King

Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science
Fellow of the Castleberry Peace Institute

Wooten Hall 148

Kimi King

Kimi Lynn King's interdisciplinary research interests include transitional justice, international humanitarian law and tribunals, human and civil rights, gender and sexual violence, and post-conflict reconciliation and restorative justice.

Along with Dr. James Meernik and the Victims and Witnesses Unit at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), she conducted a 6-year survey on the short- and long-term impact of testifying on prosecution and defense witnesses before war crimes tribunals. It is the largest in-depth study to date of witness motivations, needs related to security, physical and psycho-social well-being, a well as perceptions of truth and justice. From this research they published: Judging Justice: How Victim Witnesses Evaluate International Courts. University of Michigan Press. 2019; The Witness Experience. Cambridge University Press. 2017.

She is currently working on projects with the UNT Colombia group including projects with women who are former FARC-EP, paramilitary, and military combatants. The work broadly examines their post-conflict transition into civilian society and works to enhance economic capacity by working with a non-profit to market goods made by the women. Other projects include working with women in the Alta Vista neighborhood as they rebuild one of the poorest neighborhoods affected by violence from multiple conflict actors during the 50+year Colombian war, building economic capacity, and seeking grants to revitalize the community. Finally, along with the Madres de la Candelaria (a group of mothers searching for loved ones who were forcibly disappeared), the group is working on putting forward concerns to public officials about the delays in moving forward with the 2016 peace agreement and creating digital memory archives of each person on the Madres list of disappeared loved ones.

She is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science and an award-winning study abroad program co-leader (with James Meernik) which took students to the ICTY to do research for over a decade. She served as the coach of UNT's nationally ranked UNT Moot Court team which has ranked in the top twenty teams in the US for over two decades.