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Kimberly Turner, Ph.D.
kimberlyturner@hks.harvard.edu
International Security Fellow
Harvard University
About Me:
Kimberly Turner is a International Security program postdoctoral fellow with the Belfer Center at Harvard University. She completed her Phd July 2021. Her research stream focuses on the linkages between civil conflict and wages, protest crowd characteristics, protest success, and socio-economic effects upon comparative networks. She will join Brown University's Watson Institute as a postdcotoral fellow next year.She was a 2020-2021 Diversifying Faculty Initiative fellow for the state of Illinois from 2019-2021, and an Adam Smith Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in 2020. Her research interests include: comparative political economy, civil conflict and processes, international and regional security.
Research Interests
Conflict Processes & War
Comparative Democratization
Middle East & North African Politics
Research Methods & Research Design
Political Violence
Political Economy
Mass Protests
Protest Success Variation
Challenges To Democracy
Economics-Security Nexus
Countries of Interest
Tunisia
Hong Kong
Egypt
Belarus
Jordan
Zimbabwe
Sudan
Bahrain
My Research:
In many authoritarian regimes, the government is the primary employer and public sector positions are lucrative and secure. Public sector positions are staffed by highly skilled workers, who are often educated and trained at state-run universities. My research shows that when government is both the main provider of higher education and the main employer of skilled labor, the public in general, and university graduates in particular, come to see government as responsible for all forms of employment, both private and public. Shrinkages in the job market during periods of rapid higher education growth, or an education bulge, may prompt mass anti-governmental protests. During an education bulge, university educated workers that face declining college premiums may seek out semi and unskilled positions, displacing and replacing employees with less education. Large-scale “downshifting” of skilled labor due to an education bulge has strongly negative downstream effects upon labor configurations and wages, inducing society-wide grievance. Education bulges encourage the emergence and success of mass protests in previously impervious authoritarian regimes.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
The spread and energy of protests against racial injustice and police brutality throughout summer 2020 featured the forcible removal of monuments by members of the public. In this article, we argue that these “publicly initiated” monument removals are a novel tactic in the protest repertoire that can be differentiated from the removal of monuments by public officials. Methods Using data from the Confederate Monuments Project, we analyze whether factors such as protest momentum and state repression of demonstrators differentiate removal type. Results We find that monuments in locations with a greater number of protests in June 2020 were more likely to be removed by the public. We do not find support for a relationship between the use of state repression and public monument removal. Conclusion Our findings suggest that scholars should continue to pursue the distinction between these two types of monuments, particularly in regards to the study of protest and political mobilization.
Book Reviews:
Turner, Kimberly. “Breaking the Poverty Traps, Elevating the Poorest of the Poor”. Review of Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion. (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) for NAFSA: Association of International Educators Review of Global Studies Literature October 2010, no.2.
Turner, Kimberly. “From Victim to Victor: Documenting the Struggles and Triumphs of Women of the Third World”. Review of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn, Half the Sky (New York, New York: Alfred Knoff, 2009) for NAFSA: Association of International Educators Review of Global Studies Literature October 2010, no.2.
Turner, Kimberly. "Peter Hayden: Sea Power and maritime strategy in the 21st century”. American Review of Canadian Studies: Volume 31, Issue 3, October 2001.
Other:
This article was written in June of 2020 during the height of the BLM protests. It examines local officials use of terms such as "outsiders" to de-legitimize protest activity
This article examines Covid-19's impact upon regional and international cooperative efforts. The pandemic has emerged as an unexpected mediator in state-state relations, undermining some traditional alliances while forging new cooperative efforts between regional competitors