Kim at Graduate School

Her M.A. in Law and Diplomacy

After returning from her Peace Corps service in South Africa 1999-2001, Kim enrolled in The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

In September 2003, she completed her M.A. in Law and Diplomacy, focusing on Comparative Political Analysis and Economic Development.

Her M.A. Thesis continued her focus on the displaced, migrants, and refugees in a study of "Urban Refugee Livelihoods: Comparative Case Studies in Johannesburg and Nairobi."

Read remembrances of Kim at Tufts University by David Sussman and
Whitney Harrelson

Candidating for a Ph.D. in Political Science and Sociology

As she left The Fletcher School, Kim was seeking a place that was serious about the study of Africa and of development. With its African-specialized faculty of 160+, its offering an array of African languages, and producing more Ph.D.'s on Africa than any other U.S. university, Michigan State (MSU) was a natural match for her.

She applied and was admitted to MSU's Political Science Department and African Studies Center. She applied planning to continue her comparative studies of migration and poverty in South Africa and Central America in East Lansing.

  • Download Kim's application in 2003 for an MSU Title VI African Language and Area Studies Fellowship in Political Science. (29KB, .doc)

After a semester at MSU studying political science and African politics, Kim realized that her depth of interest in migration, refugees and the displaced, ethnicity, gender, and development was better served in political sociology than in political science. After long discussions, she applied for admission to the Ph.D. Program of the MSU Department of Sociology, was admitted, refocused her seminars and readings, and asked sociologist David Wiley to be her academic advisor.

Kim also realized that she would enjoy doing her dissertation in a new and challenging environment, chose Northern Nigeria with its mixture of Islamic, ethnic, political, and gender complexities. To prepare for research there, she enrolled in Hausa language classes with Prof. John Eulenberg, studied Hausa intensively at the Summer Cooperative African Language Program at Indiana University, and returned to continue her Hausa studies at MSU with a new addition as Coordinator of the African language program, Prof. Ibro Chekarou, a first-language Hausa speaker from Niger. Kim was helped in preparation for her interviews with Hausa-speaking women on Northern Nigeria by Salamatu AbdulKareem, a Nigerien woman on campus. Read the remembrance of Kim written by her friend Candis Driver Smith, Ph.D candidate at MSU.

In fall 2004, in a flurry of activity, Kim applied for research grants to support a year in Nigeria with proposals to the Fulbright-Hays, Fulbright IIE, Social Science Research Council, and National Science Foundation.

Download Kim's proposals for research funding:

She was awarded both Fulbright awards, but chose the more prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad for her basic support.

In fall 2005, the National Science Foundation asked her to resubmit with revisions, which she did from the airport on her way to Nigeria. In spring 2006, she learned that NSF was granting her the award, allowing her to extend her time in Nigeria.

After learning of her Fulbright Award in March 2005, Kim was pressed to complete her Ph.D. program - all seminars, the Hausa language, a Comprehensive Examination Plan and reading list, to take the exams, and to leave for Nigeria by January 2006 at the latest. Astonishingly, although her committee thought she was attempting too much, she pursued these goals night and day. She completed her comprehensive exams at home and submitted them to her faculty committee during Christmas 2005. She passed the exams, but then needed a Dissertation Proposal Defense before she left for the field, which she completed in January 2006. To the knowledge of her Ph.D. advisor, almost no other MSU sociology graduate students have ever attempted and succeeded in completing so much in a two-year period.

With so much achieved, Kim boarded the plane in late January and flew to Northern Nigeria to begin a new life of her own research in a Hausa-speaking Islamic region.

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