Kim Lacey

Kim Yehbohn Lacey is a doctoral candidate in History at Washington University in St. Louis. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Koreitsy: Koreans in the Former Soviet Republics, 1863-Present,” traces the history of ethnic Koreans who crossed the border into the Russian Far East and subsequently spread across Central Asia (and Eastern Europe) following Stalin’s deportations. Lacey examines their evolving sense of identity and belonging over time using a wide range of sources, such as songs, food, family collections and interviews. Her analysis breaks new ground by foregrounding the overlooked experiences of transnational migrants and studying the impact of gender, ethnicity, and class in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Her research is based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Japan, U.S., and South Korea.

Lacey’s broader research interests include the histories of the Russian Far East, empires, and the Korean diaspora. Some of her recent works include “The ‘Remembered’ Sakhalin Koreans in the South Korean Press, 1946-1980,” in End of Empire Migrants in East Asia: Repatriates, Returnees and Finding Home (Routledge, 2023), and “Music as Historical Evidence: Oral Songs in the Lives of Koreitsy” in Peripheral Narratives and Knowledge Production in Soviet and Contemporary Central Asia, 1917-Present (2025). She was also awarded the Timberlake Prize by the Central Slavic Conference for the best doctoral paper.

Lacey holds a BA in Eurasian and East European Studies from Bowdoin College and an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago. Her research has been supported by numerous external grants, including the Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Research Fellowship, the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship, the American Councils Title VIII Research Scholar Program, and the Korea Foundation Scholarship. Lacey is the Graduate Student Fellow in Residence at the Center for the Humanities at WashU in Fall 2025.