Aihwa Ong (simplified Chinese: 王爱华; traditional Chinese: 王愛華; pinyin: Wáng Àihuá; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ông Ài-hôa; born February 1, 1950) is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the Science Council of the International Panel on Social Progress, and a former recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship for the study of sovereignty and citizenship.

Aihwa Ong's work deals with particular entanglements of politics, technology, ethics and affects in rapidly changing situations on the Asia Pacific rim.

This angle of inquiry unsettles and troubles stabilized viewpoints and units of analysis in the social sciences, such as gender, class, citizenship, cities, sovereignty and the nation-state.

[6][7] As an anthropologist, Ong employs ethnographic observation and analytical concept-work to investigate diverse subjective and institutional effects of the global on emerging situations for ways of being human today.

[8][9] From the novel freedoms and accompanying restrictions experienced by Malaysian female workers in multinational factories[7] to the accumulative strategies of Asian entrepreneurs in relocating family and capital overseas;[10] from the disciplining of Cambodian refugees towards an embrace of American values[11] to the neoliberal reasoning and graduated modes of governing at work;[12] from the transformation of cities[13] to the rise of contemporary art in Asia;[14] Ong's work tracks the interplay of global forces and everyday practices as they crystallize into myriad and uneven contexts for human living and belonging in modernity.

Her current work focuses on regimes of governing, technology, and culture that shape new meanings and practices of the human in an emerging global region.

Her field research shifts between Singapore and China in order to track emerging global hubs for biotechnical experiments with genomic science in contemporary East Asia.

Ong also concentrates on the activity behind American institutions and how it affects the minority citizens in the society, in terms of health care, law, welfare, etc.

She presents examples of biomedical centers in Asia, such as Singapore and China and explains how they map genetic variants, disease risks, biomarkers, etc.