Dr. Kimberly Cheng

Professional Background

Dr. Kimberly Cheng is a historian of migration, modern Jewish history, and modern China. She received her PhD from the Joint PhD program in Hebrew and Judaic studies and history at New York University in 2022, where her research focused on the interconnections between the history of the Holocaust and East Asia. She also holds an M.S.Ed from the University of Pennsylvania and has significant experience teaching history in secondary schools.

Dr. Cheng has also received fellowships and grants from the German Historical Institute, the Association for Jewish Studies, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. Her article, “The Trial of Lam See-Woh: Chinese Men and German Women in Hamburg, 1933—1947,” was published in German Studies Review in February 2023. Currently, Dr. Cheng works in the William Levine Family Institute for Holocaust Education, developing content for the USHMM’s online Holocaust Encyclopedia.

Fellowship Research

During her fellowship, Dr. Cheng will research Chinese life in Germany during the Third Reich and its immediate aftermath. Her project untangles the varying conceptions of citizenship, foreignness, class, gender, and sexuality that factored into the racialization of Chinese people in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

Additionally, Dr. Cheng will continue to work on her book manuscript on Central European Jewish refugee migration to China during World War II. With a focus on daily life, her book project examines how the history and legacy of semi-colonialism in China impacted encounters between Jewish refugees and Chinese locals in the multi-ethnic metropolis of Shanghai.

Residency Period: July 24, 2023–July 24, 2025