A native of the United States, Dr. Kim [金由美] is a graduate of Harvard University (BA, MA, PhD) and was formerly an assistant professor at the State University of New York (Albany) and Hong Kong Baptist University before joining SMLC. She is a historian of late imperial and modern China, and has also taught courses on modern Asia, colonialism and imperialism in Southeast Asia, and Sino-Russian relations. Her primary research areas include the history of Inner Asia from 1600 to the present, comparative history of borderlands and frontiers, and Chinese ethnic minority languages and literatures, particularly Manchu and Mongolian.

Dr. Kim's first single-authored monograph (see below) is about the Orochen people in northern Heilongjiang during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Her second major work is a co-authored monograph about the Russian Orthodox Church in Hong Kong. She has also recently completed a GRF-funded project about non-Han names in Northeast China from 1600 to 1900 and is working on a third monograph about food resources and culinary practices in the Amur River region.