Jolene Yiqiao Kong

Profile

Jolene Yiqiao Kong is a PhD researcher in Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID, 2021–2026). She holds a double major in International Politics and Sociology from Peking University (2017) and a Master’s in Development Studies from IHEID (2019).

At a broader level, Jolene’s research addresses the tension between modernity and tradition in contemporary China. Focusing on reproduction, she examines how traditional practices and modern technologies collide, converge, and are reconfigured in people’s everyday lives. Her work explores how women engage ritual and medicine not as separate domains but as intertwined avenues through which they navigate uncertainty, seek to influence fate, and negotiate their place within a cosmos that does not always respond. 

Theoretically, Jolene engages with classic anthropological questions in the study of religion, while moving beyond approaches that reduce ritual to collective symbolism or abstract belief. Drawing on a phenomenological perspective, she foregrounds the psychological, sensory, emotional, and embodied dimensions of ritual participation. At the same time, her research contributes to the anthropology of medicine and science by showing how biomedical technologies are integrated and lived alongside enduring traditions. Through this dual focus, her work highlights how the sacred and the technical are co-constituted in the making of reproductive subjectivities and social change.

Alongside her dissertation, Jolene is also an academic translator and active organiser of scholarly exchange. She collaborates with leading Chinese publishers on a long-term series of translations in art history and religious studies, contributing to the circulation of key international scholarship in China. By bridging disciplinary divides between anthropology, political science, and religious studies, her eclectic research interests engage with broader themes of authority, ethics, and identity in times of social change.

Areas of expertise

• Medical Anthropology
• Reproductive Health and Politics
• Religion, Belief and Spirituality
• Gender Studies