Kim Samuel

Kim Samuel is an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford

Kim is a leading voice in the global movement for belonging. She is the founder and chief architect of the Belonging Forum, a global research, advocacy, and action organisation that combats social isolation and builds belonging, working toward a world where everyone can realise their inherent Right to Belong. Under Kim’s leadership, the Belonging Forum convenes the Global Symposium on Belonging, bringing together the movement’s leading thinkers and changemakers; the Samuel Fellows in Belonging, an annual programme for diverse scholars and practitioners working to advance the cause of belonging; and the Belonging Research Lab, a global collective of academic researchers who share a commitment to building social and economic systems that centre on the value of belonging, bridging the gap between research and action. In addition, Kim launched the Belonging Barometer, a first-of-its-kind, solutions-focused annual study on the state of belonging in the United Kingdom, which draws on survey data from 10,000 participants and explores diverse dimensions of connection related to people, place, power, and purpose.

In terms of academic work, Kim is a Research Fellow at OPHI (the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative), University of Oxford, and an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. At McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Kim served as a Professor of Practice at the Institute for International Development from 2015-2018, during which time she created and delivered a new course on social connectedness and its relationship to international development. She continues to lecture at universities in a number of countries, including the Multidimensional Poverty and Social Isolation two-hour class delivered in the Poverty and Human Development Module for the MPhil in Development Studies at the Oxford Department of International Development, from 2018 to the present, and the Sheila Kitzinger Programme at Green Templeton College in 2023, titled “On Belonging.  Kim received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Vancouver Island University, Canada, in 2019. She is currently pursuing a PhD by Published Works in Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK.

Kim is a member of the executive committee of Special Olympics International, a member of the Disability Rights Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch.

She writes monthly columns for Psychology Today and Forbes, as well as being is a frequent commentator in outlets including LBC, the Globe and Mail, Times of London, Scientific American, Time Magazine, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Boston Globe, USA Today, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Kim is the author of On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation (Abrams Press 2022), an exploration of the crisis of social isolation and humanity’s right to belong. She is currently conducting research for her next book, which will examine the relationship between belonging and faith.