I am an assistant research scientist at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a research fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, I worked as a senior data scientist at Code for America, where I collaborated with all levels of the U.S. government to improve access to safety net programs. I completed my PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2021. My research has been published in top outlets such as Nature Human Behaviour and received multiple awards from the American Political Science Association.
I study how the state and marginalized populations interact in American politics and policy, with a focus on policy implementation (state capacity) and community organizing and collective action (civic capacity). My research agenda is interdisciplinary and grounded in people’s everyday experiences accessing public services and solving collective problems.
In addition to my substantive interests, through my work on computational social science and data science pedagogy, I am actively engaged in bridging social sciences and data science and making computational methods accessible.
I am on the job market in the 2024-2025 academic year.
You can reach me at jkim638@jhu.edu. Here is a link to my CV.