Kimberly Marten

Kimberly Marten is a professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, specializing in international relations, international security, environmental politics, and Russia. She is a faculty member and executive committee member of Columbia’s Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies, and Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Her recent publications have analyzed Russia’s Wagner Group “private” military company (she was honored to testify before Congress on that topic twice, in 2020 and 2022), Russian activities in Latin America (she was honored to testify before Congress on that topic in 2022); Russian activities in Africa; Russia/NATO relations and the Russian reaction to NATO enlargement; and Russian intelligence agencies. She has written four books, including Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton, 1993), which received the Marshall Shulman Prize, and Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States (Cornell, 2012). The Council on Foreign Relations commissioned her special report, Reducing Tensions between Russia and NATO (2017). In addition to her 30 academic journal articles and book chapters, she has written more than 50 policy analyses in publications including the Washington Quarterly, Foreign Affairs online, War on the Rocks, Lawfare, the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the New Republic, among others. She gives frequent invited presentations to the policy community in the U.S. and abroad. She is also a frequent media commentator, and appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She earned her A.B. at Harvard and Ph.D. at Stanford. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Education

• PhD, Stanford University
• AB, Harvard University