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

Nahee works on three strands of inter-related research:

• The first strand stems from 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.
• 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 policies challenges that middle-income economies face in making the leap necessary to attain high-income status.
• The third is on the new politics of solidarity in East Asia, funded by the King's College London-Nanyang Technological University Partnership Fund, the Academy of Korean Studies, and Hong Kong Research Council. The project examines the politics that is driving post-industrial growth in emerging and emerged parts of East Asia.

Currently, Nahee is working on a monograph entitled, "Taming Corporate Power: The Pursuit of Shared Prosperity in South Korea". Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, this book project consolidates the three strands of research outlined above to examine the role that large industrial conglomerates can play in overcoming the middle-income trap, as both engines of growth and vehicles of distribution.

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 of Northeast and Southeast Asia. 

Principal supervisor

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

Co-supervisor

• Jettawat Pravat

Further details

See Nahee's research profile

See Nahee's personal website