Academic Positions

• Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, McMaster University, 2015 - Present

• Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, 2014-2015

• Visiting Student Researcher, History, Culture & Communication, Erasmus University, Spring 2012

• Pre-doctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Spring 2010

• Ph.D,. Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 2008-2014

Areas of Specialization  

• Culture and Inequality

• Race, Gender, and Class

• Economic Sociology

• Media and Popular Culture

• Sociology of Knowledge

• Qualitative Methodology

Publications - Book

Publications - Chapters & Articles

Chong PK. Inside the Critics' Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times. Princeton University Press. NJ: Princeton.

Chong, PK. (2019). “Valuing subjectivity in journalism: Bias, emotions, and self-interest as tools in arts reporting.” Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism. 20 (3):427-443.

Chong, PK. (2018). “Everyone’s A Critic? Openness as a Means to Closure in Cultural Journalism.” In The M in CITAMS@30 (Studies in Media and Communications, Volume 18). Brienza, C. et al., (Eds). Emerald Publishing Limited pp.99 – 119.

Rodney, Alexandra, Josée Johnston and Phillipa Chong. (2017). "Chefs at home? Masculinities on offer in celebrity chefs' cookbooks." In The Masculine Hearth: Food, Masculinities and Home, Michelle Szabo and Shelley Koch (eds.). London: Bloomsbury

Lamont, M., Beljean, S., and Chong, PK. (2016). “A Post-Bourdieusian Agenda for the Sociology of Evaluation.” In A Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture. Hanquinet, L. and Savage, M.(eds).

Chong, PK. (2015). “Playing Nice, Being Mean, and the Space In Between: Book Critics and the Difficulties of Writing Bad Reviews.” In Moments of Valuation: Exploring Sites of Dissonance. Antal, B and Hutter, M., and Stark, D. (eds). Oxford University Press. 133-146.

Johnston J., Rodney A., and Chong, PK. (2014). “Making Change in the Kitchen? A study of celebrity cookbooks, culinary personas, and inequality.” Poetics. 47:1-22.

Chong, PK. (2013). "Legitimate Judgment in Art, the Scientific World Reversed?: Critical Distance in Evaluation". Social Studies of Science. 43 (2): 265-281.

• Richard A. Peterson Award for Best Student Paper in the Sociology of Culture, American Sociological Association (2013)

• Hacker Mullins Best Student Paper Award in the Section on Science, Knowledge and Technology, American Sociological Association (2013)

• Honorable mention for Daniel G. Hill Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Sociology, University of Toronto (2014)

Chong, PK. (2011). "Reading Difference: How Race and Ethnicity Function as Tools for Critical Appraisal.” Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts. 39 (1): 68-84.

• Best Student Paper Award (Overall Prize), Canadian Sociological Association (2009)