My current research has two branches: One delves into the ways psychological activities, idioms, and expressions participate in ethno-national projects through attention to traumas, vulnerabilities, and victimhood. The second looks at the phenomenon of 'village sports' in China (particularly 'village NBA'), where newly established competitions have become huge festivals of media and tourist attraction. In this tournament, local heritage, commerce, development, and governance that blend into sport. This phenomenon also indicates new features in rural development, as well as new moral narratives on development and citizenship in this period of decreased economic growth. 

Since 2025
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne and Global South Study Centre: Associate Researcher

2023-2025
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt: Associate Researcher

2020-2023
Global South Study Centre, University of Cologne: Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate Researcher

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
PhD, 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

2025. "The psychological imagination of the social in contemporary China". Emotions and Society 7(1): 98-115.  https://doi.org/10.1332/26316897Y2024D000000026

2024. "Cliché anthropologists and the interactive probing of aspirations under market expansion". American Ethnologist 52(1): 64-67. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13380

2024. "The Dao of Happiness in Contemporary China: On the Encompassing Meanings and Affects of 'Xingfu'". China Perspectives 139: 81-90. https://doi.org/10.4000/130gv

2024. Self-Development Ethics and Politics in China Today: A Keyword Approach (editor). Amsterdam University Press 

2024. “Learning to xinshang (appreciate): Young adults' pursuit of non-standardized sensibilities", in Self-Development Ethics and Politics in China Today: A Keyword Approach, edited by Gil Hizi, Amsterdam University Press 

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.