Loli Kim
Biography
Dr Loli Kim is an award-winning area studies scholar specialising in Korea and early career researcher whose interdisciplinary work takes a fundamentally cross-cultural, comparative, and transnational approach to Korean and broader Asian multimodal communication, popular culture, and the circulation and transformation of meaning. Much of her work involves development of decolonialising, culturally contextualised methodological frameworksand the construction of datasets for Anglophone researchers of Asia. She received her DPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was an Academy of Korean Studies Graduate Scholar, and later completed postdoctoral research on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project Sea, Song, and Survival: The Language and Folklore of the Haenyeo. In 2023, she was awarded the Hendrick Hamel Prize for innovative contribution to Korean Studies alongside her co-author Professor Jieun Kiaer for the monograph Understanding Korean Film: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (2021). Her research spans verbal, translingual, gestural, and material modes; their local and comparative contexts; translation and global circulation; and Asian representation globally, with a particular focus on Anglophone (Western) regions. She currently teaches Modern Korea at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, including classes on Korean Popular Culture and Korean Culture during Trinity Terms. She is also Assistant Editor of the European Journal of Korean Studies and a General Series Editor ofthe interdisciplinary series Foodscaping Asia at Bloomsbury Academic.
Teaching
Lecturer on Modern Korea
Trinity Term 2024: Sociology, Popular Culture, Modern History, Politics
Trinity Term 2025: Sociology and Popular Culture
Trinity Term 2026: Culture, and Popular Culture
Publications
Publications span Comparative Area Studies, Korean Studies, popular culture, the Korean Wave, transnationalism, communication, multimodal analysis, translation studies, material culture and cross-cultural methodology, with particular emphasis on original empirical research, qualitative methodology, fieldwork-informed analysis and cross-cultural interpretation.
Books and Monographs Published
Kim, Loli. Interpreting Korean Communication and Narrative: A Guide for Anglophone Researchers Through the Lens of Film. London: Routledge, 2026.
Kim, Loli, and Jieun Kiaer. East Asian Voices in Anglophone Children’s Picture Books.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026.
Kiaer, Jieun, and Loli Kim. The Language of Asian Gestures: Embodied Words Through the Lens of Film. London: Routledge, 2024.
Kiaer, Jieun, Loli Kim, and Niamh Calway. The Language of Food in East Asian Films.
London: Routledge, 2024.
Kiaer, Jieun, Emily Lord, and Loli Kim. Understanding the Korean Wave on Screen. London:
Routledge, 2023.
Kiaer, Jieun, and Loli Kim. Understanding Korean Film: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. London: Routledge, 2021. Awarded the Hendrik-Hamel Prize for Korean Studies in Europe, 2023.
Forthcoming / Under Contract
Kim, Loli. Beyond the Gat: The Visual Communication of Hats from the 15th to 19th Centuries. London: Bloomsbury Academic, under contract, forthcoming 2027.
Kim, Loli. Korean Folklore in Traditional and Transnational Contexts. Cambridge:
Cambridge Elements in Folklore: Cambridge University Press. In preparation.
Kim, Loli, and Jihyun Park. North Korean Voices: Translating and Problematising North Korean Escapee Testimonies in South Korean and Anglophone Media. London: Bloomsbury Academic. In preparation.
Kim, Loli, and Laurence Mann. The Secret to East Asian Soft Power: The Translingual Intertextuality of East Asian Popular Culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic. In preparation.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles Published
Kiaer, J., L. Kim, H. Zhu and Li Wei. “Tomorrow? Jayaji! (자야지): Translation as
Translanguaging in Interviews with the Director of Parasite.” Translanguaging and Translation in Multilingual Contexts (2022).
Kim, L., and N. Calway. “SFDRS as a Metalanguage for ‘Foodscaping’: Adding a Formal Dimension to an Interdisciplinary, Multimodal Approach to Food.” Frontiers in Communication (2024).
Forthcoming
Kim, L. “The Semantics of Distributed Villainy in Kim Ki-young’s Hanyo (1960).” Frontiers. Forthcoming 2026.
In Preparation
Kim, L. “Infallible Mermaid Grannies: Sociological Discourses in Korean Film, Literature, and Media through the Haenyeo’s Own Words.”
Kim, L. “Signs of the Times: The Meaning of the Staircase and Other Modalities in Korean
Society and its Cinema, 1960–2020.”
Kim, L., and L. Brown. “A Multimodal Study of (Non-)Propositional Sarcastic Irony in Revenge Dramas and Films.”
Book Chapters
Kiaer, J., and L. Kim. “One-Inch-Tall Barrier of Subtitles: Translating Invisibility in Parasite.” In Y. Kim (ed.), Soft Power of the Korean Wave. London: Routledge, 2021. Kim, L., and J. Kiaer. “Conventions in How Korean Films Mean.” In J. Pflaeging et al. (eds.), Empirical Multimodality Research. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
Kiaer, J., and L. Kim. “The Voices of East Asian Families in Literature, Film, and Media.” In B. Wilson and S. A. Osman (eds.), The Asian Family in Literature and Film, vol. 1. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
Kiaer, J., L. Kim, and A. Lo. “‘Koreans Are Always Nodding or Bowing’: K-Wave Fandom’s Learning of Non-Verbal Politeness.” In M. Kim (ed.), Korean (Im)politeness.
Cham: Springer, 2024.
Kim, L. “Translingual Trinkets of the Korean Wave: Deconstructing the Transnational Power of Hybridity in K-Objects.” In S. Lee (ed.), From Koreanness to K-Ness. London: Routledge, 2026.
Kim, L., and J. Kiaer. “Intercultural Encounters: Understanding Intercultural Multilingualism and Translingualism in Éric Lartigau’s #JeSuisLà.” In T. Lin (ed.), Multilingualism, Literature and Translation in East Asia. London: Routledge, 2026.
Reference Works and Scholarly Reference Contributions
Kim, L. East Asian Diaspora Children’s Language Acquisition and Translanguaging. Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies, forthcoming 2026.
General Series General Editor and Co-Founder
Foodscaping Asia
Bloomsbury Academic
2023–present
Assistant Editor
European Journal of Korean Studies
2023–present
Supporting editorial development, peer review processes and the dissemination of original research across the field of Korean Studies.
Series Editor
Sea, Song and Survival: The Language and Folklore of the Haenyeo
Bloomsbury Academic
2022–present [in prep with David Avital; co-editor Professor Jieun Kiaer]
Developed in conjunction with the Leverhulme-funded Sea, Song and Survival: The Language and Folklore of the Haenyeo, this collection is the output from our research organised into several volumes.
Series Editor
Asian Folklore in Local and Transnational Contexts (tentative)
Palgrave Macmillan
2025–present [in prep]
Founding series editor.
Invited Lectures and Presentations
Invited Lectures and Workshops on Comparative and Cross-Cultural Methodologies
“Interpreting Korean Popular Culture: How to Perform Cross-Cultural Multimodal Analysis”, Transculturality and Diversity in East Asia: Transnational Interactions Lecture Series, University of Valencia, Spain (2026).
“Towards a New Paradigm for Cross-Cultural Multimodal Analysis: The Case of Western European Researchers and Asian Discourse”, Cultural Multimodal Analysis Panel, World Convention of the Korean Language Symposium (2023).
“Interpreting Korean Visual Communication: A Cross-Cultural Approach”, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia (2024).
These presentations focus on the development of qualitative methodologies for engaging with communication, representation, and cultural practices across linguistic and cultural boundaries.
Invited Lectures on Korean Studies, Literature and Cultural Communication
“The Korean Literature Through the Korean Wave”, IKSU–Sejong Korean Studies Summer School, University of Central Lancashire (2025).
“Translingualism and Heritage Preservation in Korean On-Screen Media: Its Importance for Korean and Global Youths”, Korean Youth: Spaces, Ecologies and Technologies Conference, University of Edinburgh (2023).
Invited Lectures on Representation, Gender and Cultural Change
•“Women’s Movement in the Moving Image: Insights into Changes in Korean Women’s Film Narratives and Archetypes, 1960–2018”, The Agency of Korean Women Workshop, Wolfson College, University of Oxford (2018).
Conference Organisation and Knowledge Exchange
Organiser and Presenter, Foodscaping Asia I–III Panels and Methodology Workshop, International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 13), Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia (2024).
Organiser, East Asian Foodscaping Panel, 28th Asian Studies Conference, Sophia
Media Contributions and Public Scholarship
The Korea Times — “Understanding Korean Film book seeks to tackle invisibilities in Kfilm translation”
The Korea Times — “Korean studies struggles to grow despite success of K-pop, Kdramas”
Radio Times — “Squid’s In: Squid Game is Gory and Controversial – so why is it so popular all over the world?”
Consultancy and Applied Research
Consultant on Western-Asian Cross-Cultural Semiotics and Marketing
KIMera Systems
Applying comparative and cross-cultural methodologies to problems of communication, localisation, audience reception and cultural circulation across Asian and Western contexts. Providing comparative and cross-cultural analysis of Asian societies, communication practices, media, consumer cultures and semiotic systems for international organisations, creative industries and commercial partners. Clients have included international agencies and organisations such as Canvas8, Expedia, Lego, Untold Story Travel and major Korean media productions. Due to confidentiality agreements, further details can be provided where appropriate.
