I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology. My research looks at the social effects of population aging and the “industrialization (chanyehua)” – i.e. marketization and professionalization – of eldercare in urban China. My fieldwork primarily takes place in an eldercare company that runs several assisted living facilities in Nanjing. I work with entrepreneurs, marketing specialists, and salespersons in the headquarters, while I also spend a lot time with caregivers, managers, and senior residents and their families when volunteering in the facilities. Tentatively entitled Born to Age: The Industrialization of Eldercare and the Making of Aging Subjects in China, my dissertation seeks to bring together the two worlds of commercial eldercare: the marketing of service and the everyday work of care.

More recently I wrote this blogpost reflecting on the notion of population (renkou) in China， check it out here: http://blog.castac.org/2020/02/hashtag-i-am-one-of-the-1-4-billion/.