Principal Investigator

I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam (UvA). My research interests include urban anthropology, migration and mobility regimes, comparative racial formations in Asia and Euro-America, transnational student mobility, global cities, African diaspora in China, Chinese diaspora in the United States, and class and social transformations in Chinese society. I am the author of two books: Diaspora and Class Consciousness: Chinese Immigrant Workers in Multiracial Chicago (2012), and Mapping the New African Diaspora in China: Race and the Cultural Politics of Belonging (2017). Both are published by Routledge Press.

Please click here to see my staff profile at UvA.

Postdoc

I am originally from a rural village in China’s Henan province. I obtained my doctoral degree in communication studies from Renmin University of China in May 2023. My dissertation is titled, “Reproducing Farmers: The labor divisions among live e-commerce teammates in rural China.” Based on one-year ethnographic research in a rural village in North China, my dissertation investigates the platformization of supply chain of agricultural products and the social relationship among platform workers in live e-commerce teams. I examine the collective labor process of performing authenticity, the tension between digital influencers and entrepreneurs, and the infrastructural role of media technologies. From December 2021 to September 2023, I was a visiting scholar at Utrecht University, hosted by the focus area Governing the Digital Society in the Institute of Cultural Inquiry. I was also a research fellow at the Medien Der Kooperation project, University of Siegen, Germany, from April to September 2023. For the ChinaWhite project, I plan to explore the dynamics in the construction of (authentic) whiteness in China’s platform economy. I am interested in the cooperations and frictions between Chinese and Western team members in the production of live streaming videos in the context of rural China. I have published a paper in Chinese journal of Communication, and Sociology of Communications (Accepted). Apart from academic research, I enjoy hiking and cooking.

Postdoc

I am an anthropologist with a special interest in understanding the mobility of Europeans to non-western contexts against current shifts in global power hierarchies and the related (re-)negotiation of social and economic positions of migrant groups and individuals. In my PhD, completed at the University of Basel in 2019, I investigated the trajectories and positionalities of Swiss professionals in Mainland China. I am working on the subproject “Performing whiteness in transnational business and entrepreneurship.” Previously, I was responsible for Knowledge Transfer at the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research for migration and mobility studies, a scientific collaborator and lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Basel and I also worked many years as an expert in integration policy making for a Swiss cantonal administration. I have published articles in Transitions: Journals of Transient Migration, and International Migration. I enjoy Yoga and meditation practice as well as outdoor activities.

Postdoc (Nov 2019 - Aug 2020)

I’m Ed and I’m one of the postdoctoral researchers on the project. Before, during and since an undergrad degree in Modern Languages and a PhD in Anthropology, I’ve spent five years living in various parts of China, as well as another three between Russia, Korea and Japan. These experiences, it is fair to say, have shaped my own sense of self in important ways, and growing out of this I have been keen to study how relationships among Chinese and Russian people have over time interfaced with wider state-level ideas, including socialism. As a postdoc on the ChinaWhite project my contribution is to look into Chinese state policies towards Russian and former-Soviet citizens living in China and how these intersect with shifting senses of identity both in the Sino-Russian borderlands and cosmopolitan cities such as Shanghai. I am the author of Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journeys in Between (Hurst & Company, 2019).

Postdoc

I am one of the postdoctoral researchers for the ChinaWhite project. I recently finished my PhD (2020) at the University of Amsterdam. My dissertation focused on the Chinese higher education system's influence on rural-urban relations in China's Hubei province. In the ChinaWhite project I will focus on romantic relationships between white women and Chinese men, investigating how whiteness features in relationships between, for example, Chinese men and Russian women in Hainan or Chinese men and European women in Beijing. I am also interested in the representations of these relationship in the online so-called WWAM-community. I lived in China for approximately seven years, and am looking forward to returning for further fieldwork. When I am not working, I love going out for long runs in the countryside and playing my guitar.

PhD Student

I am a graduate of the School of Social Anthropology at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens (Greece). I received my Master of Law in Sociology from the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai (China), with a scholarship from the Chinese Government (CSC). My research interests are Chinese Society and Culture, as well as Marketing Research. Currently, I am a PhD student at the Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) at the University of Amsterdam under the ChinaWhite project. Specifically, my doctoral research focuses on "Performing whiteness in China’s transnational business and entrepreneurship sector".

PhD student

I am a PhD candidate at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam (UvA). I study whiteness as performed in China’s Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) industry. My research background is in the anthropology of migration, regional expressions of the global education industry, and transnational families in Asia. I am from Canada and I have worked and studied for 7 years in China and Singapore, first as a student of Chinese language and then as a teacher of English language. I wrote my Master’s thesis at the University of Victoria titled The Parent Tax: The governance of gratitude among transnationally educated sons in Singapore (2016).

PhD student

I obtained my B.A. in English and Literature at the Minzu University of China and research M.A. in Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. My fields of interest are visual arts, globalization studies, and China studies. For my PhD research, I look into western models and performers' daily experiences in China and investigate how multiple versions of whiteness are performed in China's media, fashion, and entertainment industries. Outside academia, I enjoy cooking, dancing, and creative writing.

Project administration

I am a professional fixer with a background in marine transportation, logistics and administrative management. I now manage research grants within the fields of medical anthropology and global health as well as organise conferences and events.