Kim Yi Dionne

Kim Yi Dionne is an associate professor of political science at UC Riverside. She is also the editor-in-chief of Good Authority, a blog that brings political science insights to a broader public, and the founder and co-host of Ufahamu Africa, a weekly podcast about life and politics on the continent. She serves as a member of IGCC’s steering committee.

Dionne’s research focuses on African politics, particularly health and development interventions meant to improve the human condition. Her research largely relies on analysis of public opinion and political behavior. She is the author of Doomed Interventions: The Failure of Global Responses to AIDS in Africa (Cambridge University Press 2018). She collected much of the data for her book in Malawi, where she was a Fulbright Fellow from 2008–2009. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA, where she was a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellow in Swahili. She held previous faculty appointments at Smith College and Texas A&M University. She is the child of an immigrant, the mother of two children, and has been an advocate for inclusion in academia.