Min Jung Kim is a Visiting Researcher at UNU-WIDER and a Ph.D. candidate at American University in Washington, DC. Her research spans international relations, comparative politics, and political violence. She focuses on the role of marginalized societies and territories in shaping larger political dynamics, such as state-building, conflict, and interstate relations. Her current research projects include the role of local social structures in shaping state-building processes in the Asian highlands and buffer zones in world politics.
From 2020 to 2022, she was a predoctoral scholar with the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies (ISCS) at George Washington University. She was a researcher for UNU-WIDER's "Addressing Group-based Inequalities” project. Her professional experiences include project development, database management, and research and analysis at the UN Migration Agency (IOM), the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). She holds a master's degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in English from Geumgang University in South Korea.
Her research has been featured in peer-reviewed academic journals, such as International Affairs.
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