Author Profile

Kimberly Cecilia Burke is a doctoral student at UC Berkeley’s Department of Sociology and a research fellow at the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), a nonprofit that uses evidence-based approaches to create social, cultural, and policy change in the context of policing. Her research includes policing, inequality, and state violence and is grounded in feminist ethics of love, mutuality, and respect. As a scholar-activist, Kimberly seeks to dismantle “us versus them” attitudes, challenge anti-Black racism, and build equitable solutions for the problems inherent to carceral institutions.

As CPE’s former project director for the Department of Justice funded National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, she led the creation of the first federal training on interrupting police bias. The training has now been used in dozens of departments, presented before the United Nations in Geneva, and adapted for community engagement efforts.

Kimberly has been honored as San Diego State’s Distinguished Women’s Studies Alumni in 2020, UC Berkeley’s Social Justice Fellow in 2018, UC Berkeley’s Chancellor’s Fellow in 2017, Justice Policy Network Distinguished Fellow in 2016, and Volunteer of the Year at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in 2014.