Dodom Kim is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University. Her research interests focus on urban residents’ documentation practices, media technology, and the narratives of citizenship in Northeast Asia, especially the People’s Republic of China. Her dissertation, Documenting Uncertainty: Bureaucratic Evidence, Media Practice, and Migrant Citizenship in Southern China examines how urban migrants in Shenzhen speak of and interact with government-issued “proof papers” (zhengjian) like IDs, certificates, permits, and registers in their everyday lives. At the intersection of legal anthropology, migration studies, and media anthropology, her work highlights the hopes, desires, and anxieties that compel migrants to engage extensively in documentation practices, even when legal documents undermine their claims of belonging. Based on her teaching and media lab organization experiences, Kim is also interested in experimenting with modes of ethnographic inquiry especially through films and digital media. Kim received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology from Seoul National University (Seoul, South Korea).
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS AND WRITINGS
Rule of Law and Media in the Making of Legal Identity in Urban Southern China. The Oxford of Law and Anthropology, Marie-Claire Foblets, Mark Goodale, Maria Sapignoli, and Olaf Zenker (eds.), Oxford University Press.
Narrating Mobility as an Achievement on the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Border. Made In China Journal, in a special forum on Shenzhen-Hong Kong borderlands.
Mixed Movements: Virus, Things, Persons, and Signs Part 1, Part 2. Oxford COMPAS blog.