I am currently finalizing a book based on my research on practices of self-improvement in urban China. I studied workshops for interpersonal skills and how they produce affective spaces through which participants can temporarily realize their ideal of personhood in distinction from their everyday lifeworlds. In my new project, I focus on perceptions on the value of the person in contemporary China as it is configured through negotiation between the market economy and conceptions of morality. I examine how value is pursued, identified and maintained through contemporary self-cultivation.

2019
Australian Anthropological Society Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, The University of Sydney

2018
Teaching Fellow, Department of Anthropology, The University of Sydney

2014-2018
hD, Anthropology, University of Sydney
PhD Thesis: “The Affective Medium and Ideal Person in Pedagogies of 'Soft Skills' in Contemporary China”

2013
M.A., East Asian Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2008-2013
Research Thesis: "Non-Invasive Therapy: The Forces Shaping the Practice of Psychology in Urban China"

• Contemporary China
• Self-cultivation and personhood
• Affect and phenomenology
• Globalization and social change

2021 "Tragic Stability and Elusive Selfhood: On the Drive for Self-Development in Contemporary China”. Journal of Contemporary Chinese Affairs 50(2): 161-179.

2021 “Becoming a Role Model: The affordances of soft skills in contemporary China”. Ethos 49(2): 135-151.

2021 “Zheng Nengliang and Pedagogies of Affect in Contemporary Urban China”. Social Analysis 65(1): 23-43.

2021 “Against Three Cultural Characters Speaks Self-Improvement, or On the Individualization of Discourses on Social Development in Contemporary China”. Anthropology & Education Quarterly. 52(3): 237-253.

2019 "Marketised ‘Educational Desire’ and the Impetus for Self-Improvement: The shifting and reproduced meanings of higher education in contemporary China”. Asian Studies Review 43(3): 493-511

2019 “Speaking the China Dream: Self-realization and nationalism in China’s public speaking shows”. Continuum 33(1): 37-50.

2018 "Gendered Self-Improvement: Autonomous personhood and the marriage predicament of young women in urban China”. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 19(4): 298-315.

2017 “'Developmental' therapy for a developing nation:  The sociopolitical meanings of psychology in urban China”. China: An International Journal 15(2): 4-26.

2016 “Evading Chronicity: Paradoxes in counseling psychology in contemporary China”. Asian Anthropology 
15(1): 68-81.