Al Lim is a Presidential Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Singapore Management University. His research examines how people navigate value, risk, and uncertainty in Southeast Asia’s rapidly changing financial and technological landscapes. His current book project, Risking Fortune, explores the social worlds of Thailand's crypto economy, drawing on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Bangkok and across the region. His work has appeared in Urban Geography, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, and The Journal of the Siam Society, and he was awarded the H. Russell Bernard Prize by the Society for Anthropological Sciences for a paper examining how fiscal design shapes AI-crypto ecosystems. His research is informed by industry experience in venture investing and ecosystem building at AI and crypto companies.
Qualifications
- PhD in Anthropology and Environment, Yale University, USA, 2026
- MPhil in Anthropology and Environment, Yale University, USA, 2023
- MSc in Urbanisation and Development (best overall performance), The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, 2020
- BA (Hons) in Urban Studies (summa cum laude), Yale-NUS College, Singapore, 2019
Research Interests
- Cultures of Finance and Technology
- Crypto, AI, and Digital Economies
- Urban Southeast Asia