Rate My Professor Kimi King

Kimi L. King is a Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of North Texas, where she has served since 1993, advancing from assistant to full professor. She earned a PhD in Political Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1995 with a dissertation on administrative and judicial decision-making, a JD from the same institution in 1990 with majors in International Relations focusing on International Law and American Politics focusing on Public Law, an MPA from Northeastern University in 1986 specializing in Public Policy, Finance and Budgeting, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Illinois in 1984 with minors in Business Economics and Sociology. King's career highlights include serving as interim chair of the Department of Political Science in 2021, the second female chair in its history, founding the department's internship program and pre-law program as UNT's first full-time pre-law advisor, and coaching the nationally ranked UNT Moot Court team, which has ranked in the top twenty in the US for over two decades and earned more than 250 individual and team awards. She co-leads an award-winning study abroad program to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with James Meernik, spanning over a decade.

King's interdisciplinary research examines transitional justice, international humanitarian law and tribunals, human and civil rights, gender and sexual violence, post-conflict reconciliation and restorative justice, constitutional law, public policy, political instability, language endangerment, and judicial decision-making. Notable publications include the books Judging Justice: How Victim Witnesses Evaluate International Courts (University of Michigan Press, 2019, co-authored with James D. Meernik) and The Witness Experience: Testimony at the ICTY and Its Impact (Cambridge University Press, 2017), stemming from a six-year survey with the ICTY Victims and Witnesses Unit—the largest in-depth study of witness motivations, security needs, physical and psycho-social well-being, and perceptions of truth and justice. Key articles feature The impact of international tribunals and domestic trials on peace and human rights after civil war (International Studies Perspectives, 2010), Gender justice or just gender? The role of gender in sexual assault decisions at the ICTY (Social Science Quarterly, 2007), and The Supreme Court and the Powers of the Executive: The Adjudication of Foreign Policy (Political Research Quarterly, 1999), with her work cited over 678 times per Google Scholar. She has secured grants including National Science Foundation funding for Political Instability and Language Endangerment (2017-2020, $42,515), Fulbright Hays (2024, $8,600), and multiple UNT internal grants. Awards encompass the University Distinguished Teaching Professorship (2010-11) and UNT Foundation Faculty Leadership Award (2023). King co-founded the Women and Gender Equity Network at UNT and leads projects in Colombia on former combatants' reintegration, economic capacity building, and community revitalization in violence-affected areas, including digital memory archives for disappeared persons.