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Kimberly Lowe Frank

Associate Professor

617.349.8337
Headshot Kimberly Lowe

Professor Lowe is a historian with research and teaching expertise in both international and European history. At Lesley her courses cover the history of twentieth-century genocides, international law and human rights, and humanitarian social movements. Her courses incorporate innovative forms of history education, such as the award-winning historical role-playing games from Reacting to the Past.

Professor Lowe’s research focuses on the influence of transnational social movements on international law, foreign aid, and national sovereignty from the mid-nineteenth through twentieth centuries. She has conducted archival research in Switzerland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and the United States. She has held fellowships in both Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany and Geneva, Switzerland, and speaks both German and French.

Professor Lowe’s existing publications analyze the impact of interwar definitions of war victims’ rights on humanitarian aid provision after the First World War. Her first book manuscript examines how the League of Nations Member States used humanitarian aid as a tool to manage the crisis of European democracy from 1917 to 1939. Her second book project examines the effect of decolonization on the International Red Cross Movement from 1947 to 1977, decades during which this traditionally Eurocentric movement asserted its relevance to post-colonial regimes and anti-colonial liberation movements in a rapidly changing geo-political landscape.

Professor Lowe holds a PhD in History from Yale University, an MA and MPhil in History from Yale University, and a BA in History from Pepperdine University.


 

Publications

  • Lowe, Kimberly. “Better fed than red: international famine relief, 1921-22.” In Humanitarianism and the Greater War, 1914-24. Edited by Elisabeth Piller and Neville Wylie (Manchester University Press, October 2023). ISBN 9781526173249
  • Lowe, Kimberly, Liv Cummins, Summer Clark, Lisa Spitz, Bill Porter. Student-Led Peer Review: A Practical Guide to Implementation Across Disciplines and Modalities. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing (2022). ISBN 9781642673098
  • Lowe, Kimberly. “The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Reconstruction of the New Europe, 1918-1923.” In A New Europe, 1918-1923: Instability, Innovation, Recovery. Edited by Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk and Jay Winter. European Network Remembrance and Solidarity. London: Routledge (2022). ISBN 9781032209739
  • Lowe, Kimberly. “The Red Cross and the Laws of War, 1863-1949: International Rights Activism before Human Rights.” In The Routledge History of Human Rights. Edited by Lora Wildenthal and Jean Quataert. New York: Routledge, 2019. ISBN 9781138784338
  • “The League of Red Cross Societies and International Committee of the Red Cross: a re-evaluation of American influence in interwar internationalism.” Moving the Social – Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements/Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen, Special Issue: Transnational Humanitarian Action: Atlantic and Global Voluntary Activities from Abolitionism to the NGOs, 1800-2000, 57 (2017). doi: 10.13154/mts.57.2017.37-56.
  • “Reassessing the League of Nations’ Humanitarian Assistance Regimes, 1918-1939.” In Decades of Reconstruction: Postwar Societies, State-Building, and International Relations, from the Seven Years War to the Cold War. Publications of the German Historical Institute. Edited by James Retallack and Ute Planert. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. doi:10.1017/9781316694091.01
  • “Navigating the profits and pitfalls of governmental partnerships: the ICRC and intergovernmental relief, 1918–23.” Disasters, 39: s204–s218. doi: 10.1111/disa.12154
  • “Humanitarianism and National Sovereignty: Red Cross Intervention on Behalf of Political Prisoners in Soviet Russia, 1921–3.” Journal of Contemporary History 49, no. 4 (2014): doi:10.1177/0022009414538471.
  • Neutralizing Bolshevism: The Weaponization of Humanitarian Aid, 1917 – 1939 (book manuscript, in progress)
  • “The Red Cross and the Geneva Convention, 1863-1949: International Rights Activism before Human Rights,” in The Routledge History of Human Rights, eds. Lora Wildenthal and Jean Quataert (forthcoming, 2018).
  • “Peer Review, Inside & Out: From Internal to Collaborative Processing & Back Again” (article, under review).

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