Kimberly Hoang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and the College at the University of Chicago. Dr. Hoang is the author of Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work (2015) published by the University of California Press. This monograph draws on 22 months of ethnographic research between 2006-2007 and 2009-2010 where she worked as a bartender and hostess in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's stratified sex industry as the country finds its place on the global stage. Her ethnography takes an in-depth and often personal look at both sex workers and their clients to show how high finance and benevolent giving are intertwined with intimacy in Vietnam's informal economy. She is also the lead editor of, Human Trafficking Reconsidered: Rethinking the Problem, Envisioning New Solutions (2014), a collection commissioned by Open Society, with Professor Rhacel Parrenas.
She will be presenting her work, "Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendency, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work."