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I'm Siyu, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania. My work is broadly concerned with the transforming relationships between labour, technology, and governance in contemporary China.

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Previously during my DPhil in Anthropology at the University of Oxford, I conducted the fieldwork of my doctoral research in Hegang, Heilongjiang Province, China. Entitled Utopia of Indolence: Imagining and Inhabiting Devalued Property in Chinaʼs Rust Belt , my dissertation examines a notable shift in the labor landscape in China, namely when disenfranchised migrant workers chose to withdraw from industrial wage labor, and pick up online gig work, while dwelling in geographically peripheral localities to adopt a low-income and low-spending lifestyle. My research has been generously supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation.

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At Oxford, I have taught lecturers, seminars, and tutorials at the Social Science Division, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Department of International Development, and the Stanford House.

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I hold a BS in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University, and an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford.

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Besides doing rersearch in anthropology, I'm also a self-shooting director​. You can find my audio-visual works in the other tabs.