Profile
JOLENE YIQIAO KONG

Jolene Yiqiao KONG

PhD Candidate Anthropology and Sociology
Spoken languages
English, Chinese, French

PhD Thesis
 

PhD Thesis Title:  “Beseeching for Babies” (qiuzi): Metaphysics, Medicine, and the Journey of Reproduction in Contemporary China

PhD Completion Date: Apr 2026

PhD Supervisor: Aditya Bharadwaj

Jolene's PhD research examines the practice of beseeching for babies (qiuzi) and its intersections with metaphysical, medical, and biopolitical dimensions of reproduction in contemporary China. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in temples, IVF clinics, OBGYN spaces, and online platforms, her dissertation traces how urban women navigate the uncertainties of fertility through both spiritual and medical avenues. It highlights how ling (efficacy/spirit) circulates across these domains, shaping embodied practices, collective beliefs, and intimate hopes.  By analysing these reproductive journeys, Jolene illuminates the complex interplay between agency, cultural norms, and social change in the making of reproductive subjectivities in urban China. Her work brings a phenomenological attention to the embodiment of ritual, showing how women integrate medical technologies into ritual practice and oscillate between human effort and heavenly fate, seeking to reconcile the promises of modern medicine with the intractable silence of the cosmos, and to create channels of communication through which destiny itself might be swayed.
 

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 
     

Publications and works
 

Translations
 

  • Martin J. Powers, Art and Political Expression in Early China
    Chinese edition forthcoming in 2027 with Sanlian Bookstore.
    Originally published in 1991, Yale University Press.
    Co-translated with Kexin Wang.
  • Wu Hung & Paul Copp (eds.), Refiguring East Asian Religious Art: Buddhist Devotion and Funerary Practice
    Chinese edition forthcoming in 2026 with Paragon Book Gallery.
    Originally published in 2019, University of Chicago Press.
    Co-translated with Kexin Wang.
     

Workshops and Panel Discussions
 

  • 2026 — Panelist, Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Meeting, Panel: From Bodies to Bureaucracies: Reproduction and Gendered State Power in Contemporary China, Vancouver, Canada.
  • 2025 — Panelist, CORTH (Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health) Research Fora, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
  • 2025 — Panelist, Lausanne Colloquium on Reproductive Care (Birthing, Mothering and Othering: Actors, Representations and Practices in Global Maternal and Reproductive Care Journeys), Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • 2025 — Chair and Panelist, American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, Panel: Phantasmic Conceptions: Towards an Anthropology of Ghostly Reproductions?, New Orleans, USA. 
  • 2025 — Co-organiser, Population: A Concept in Crisis?, CUSO Gender Workshop, Leukerbad, Switzerland.
  • 2025 — Panelist, Swiss Repro Launch, Zurich, Switzerland.
  • 2025 — Participant, Infrastructures of Health, CUSO Anthropology Workshop, Saas-Almagell, Switzerland
  • 2024 — Co-organiser, Reproduction in the Contemporary World: Gender, Kinship, Governance and Technologies, CUSO Gender Workshop, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • 2024 — Panelist, Geneva Forum on East Asia, Panel: Futures of Reproductive Rights in East Asia: Session on China, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 2019 — Panelist, UNAIDS Facebook Live Discussion, AI & Big Data’s Impact on the HIV Response, UNAIDS Office, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • 2019 — Panelist, Tech4HIV: The Role of AI and Other Technologies in Public Health, Geneva, Switzerland.
     

Other Work Experiences
 

  • Teaching Assistant at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology (2021-2023, 2025-2026)
  • Strategy Manager at the Sany Group, Sany Heavy Industries Co. Ltd, Beijing, China (2019-2021)
  • Intern and Project Consultant at UNAIDS Geneva Office, Geneva, Switzerland (2018-2019)