Kimberly Chong

Kimberly Chong is an Associate Professor in Anthropology at University College London (UCL), Department of Anthropology. She is currently on research leave for the 2023-24 academic year while continuing her scholarly work.

Trained in economics, anthropology and sociology, her research expertise spans financialization and the anthropology of finance, economic imagination, ethnographies of work and labour, anthropology of organizations, race and gender in the global economy, digital capitalism and platform economies. Her work is characterized by ethnographic approaches, particularly through 16 months of fieldwork inside the China arm of a global management consultancy.

Her publications reveal a consistent focus on how financial practices, management consulting, and economic imaginaries operate across cultural contexts, with particular attention to China's economic transformation and the moral dimensions of financialization. Recent work increasingly examines how race and gender shape investment narratives and economic practices.

• European Group for Organizational Studies Book Award 2021 (for Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China)

Chong has taught a wide range of modules including Anthropology of the Global Economy, Anthropology of Capitalisms, Anthropology of China, Theory, Ethnography and Professional Practice, Anthropology of Development, and Ethnographic Research Methods at UCL, SOAS and University of Sussex. Funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, she is currently writing a book on investment imaginaries that analyzes narratives of financial decision-making, with particular attention to how imaginaries of social difference influence investment contexts.