I am a critical urban researcher, an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and Management at Renmin University of China, and join the department as an SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2024). I got my PhD in Human Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2017). I also hold a BA in Urban Management (2009) and an MSc in Urban and Regional Economics (2011) from Peking University. I am an editor of City, and a corresponding editor for the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 

Trained as a Human Geographer, I have long been interested in spatial politics and urban political economy in China’s urban transformation. After previous investigations on Beijing’s green belts and the Jiehebu area, my current research develops along two lines of inquiry, one focusing on the infrastructural lives of authoritarianism and the other looking into the urban mechanisms of “Global China.”

The project I am developing at UZH is focusing on the first line of inquiry. It asks why urban density has been turned into a target of state actions in the Chinese context, and how it is integrated into the process of disciplining the urban. The project focuses particularly on the material politics of urban infrastructures involved in this process. Foregrounding a new direction of urban politics research, this project will hopefully contribute to the literature on urban infrastructures, justice and the state in global urban studies.

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