Xuyi Zhao

Matriculated September 2018

Research Interests

Temporality, urbanization and city-making, mobility, gender, anthropology of the state, infrastructure, political economy of China

About

Xuyi Zhao is an urban ethnographer broadly interested in city-making, temporality, gender, and (im)mobility. Her current research investigates state-engineered urbanization in Southwest China at the intersection of infrastructural urbanism, community building, and the reconfigurations of time. Based on 15 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, her doctoral dissertation traces, inter alia, what futures are prefigured or precluded by master-planned urban transformation, what kinds of political consciousness and collective imagination are engendered in the process, and how they materialize to both perpetuate and change social dynamics surrounding class, family, and work.

Prior to joining BU, Zhao studied political science at Peking University for her undergraduate degree and obtained an MPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern studies from the University of Cambridge. Her publications have appeared in City & Society, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, the Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology book series, and the Frederick S. Pardee Center’s Issues in Brief series.

Awards & Grants

• Bloom Dissertation Fellowship, Boston University (2024)
• China-U.S. Scholars Program (CUSP), Institute of International Education (2024)
• BU Center for Innovation in Social Science (CISS) Travel Award (2023)
• Boston University Women’s Council Award (2023)
• Frederick S. Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellowship (2023)
• Senior Core Curriculum Writing Fellowship (2023)
• Boston University Long-term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship (2022)
• The Association for Asian Studies Graduate Research Grant (2021)
• Initiative on Cities (IOC) Early Stage Urban Research Award (2021)
• Boston University Short-term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship (2021)
• Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Small Grant (2019 & 2020)
• Boston University Dean’s Fellowship (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 & 2024)

Publications

• “A Timespace of Zero-COVID in Southwest China: Building Community, Governing Time.” City & Society 36(3): 160–170. http://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12502.
• (Honorable Mention, 2023 Critical Urban Anthropology Association Graduate Student Paper Prize)
• “‘I’m not a Feminist, but…’ Hegemonic Femininities and Women’s Autonomy Revisited in a Chinese University.” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 29(3): 344–363. https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2023.2254961.