Dr Nahee Kang

Biography

Dr Kang is based at the Department of International Development. She researches capitalist development in the emerging world through the multi-disciplinary lens of economic sociology and political economy. Nahee is the Deputy Director of the KCL-SOAS London Asia Pacific Centre for Social Sciences. 

Prior to joining King’s, Nahee was a Lecturer in Development Management at the Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM), University of Manchester. Before that, she held both an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Visiting Fellowship at the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR), Nottingham University Business School.

Before coming to England, she worked briefly as a researcher at the Korea Institute of Finance (KIF) in South Korea, and held visiting fellowships at the International Centre for the Study of East Asian Development (ICSEAD) and United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) in Japan. She obtained a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from University of Cambridge, fully funded by the Cambridge Political Economy Society Trust. 

Research

Dr Kang works on three strands of inter-related research:

1. The first strand stems from funded doctoral research funded by the Cambridge Political Economy Trust, and post-doctoral fellowship funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which examined the institutional dynamics of late capitalism, and corporate and industrial change in East Asia.

2. The second strand is on the political economy of the middle-income trap, funded by the British Academy’s Rising Star Engagement Award, explored a specific set of challenges that middle-income economies face in making the leap necessary to attain high-income status.

3. The third, and most recent strand of work is on the new politics of solidarity in East Asia, funded by the KCL-Nanyang Technological University Partnership Fund and the Academy of Korean Studies. The driving idea behind this project is that there is a limit to studying economies languishing in the trap, and to overcome the trap, closer scrutiny of high-income transition in East Asia is required, with focus on the politics that move policies.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 5YYD0004 East Asian Development 
• 6YYD0004 National Development Strategies
• 4YYD0004 Social and Political Analysis of Emerging Economies

Postgraduate

• 7YYD0012 Industrial Development: Strategy and Competitiveness of East Asian Firms
• 7YYD0004 The Political Economy of Market Reforms

PhD supervision

Nahee supervises in the areas of late capitalism, democracy, and development with focus on emerging economies and regions.

Principal supervisor

• Jisun Yi (successfully completed in 2018)
• Kahee Jo
• Jessica Loy
• Han Hee Lee
• Sam Ding

Further details

See Nahee's research profile