Security and the Emotional Life of Power
My research explores security not merely as a set of practices or policies, but as a deeply affective and contested domain — where fear, loyalty, identity, and legitimacy intertwine. Rooted in critical and interpretive traditions, my work interrogates how security is narrated, enacted, and resisted in China, from grassroots mobilisations to state-led campaigns.
Through publications on counter-terrorism, data governance, privacy, and nationalist discourse, I contribute to a rethinking of security that attends to its emotional textures and cultural specificities. Whether examining the mass line ethos, digital surveillance, or feminist critiques of securitisation, I seek to unsettle rigid binaries and illuminate how power feels, not just how it functions.
My contribution to Security Studies lies in bridging empirical depth with conceptual nuance — offering grounded, multilingual insight into China's security practices, while expanding the field's capacity to engage with affect, legitimacy, and the politics of everyday life.
Chinese Politics in Global Context
My research investigates the evolving dynamics of Chinese politics, with a focus on how power is legitimised, contested, and projected both domestically and internationally. From grassroots nationalism to data governance, from population policy to political violence, I explore how China governs — and how it is governed by — the pressures of history, emotion, and global entanglement.
Situated at the intersection of International Relations and Area Studies, my work offers conceptually informed, empirically rich insights into contemporary China. Drawing on fieldwork, textual analysis, and multilingual sources, I contribute to de-Westernising IR by foregrounding Chinese political thought, state practices, and normative visions — while remaining attentive to the lived experiences and contradictions within them.
Emotional Governance
My research explores how emotion animates governance — how states cultivate fear, loyalty, grief, and pride to secure rule and shape political life. In the Chinese context, I trace how affect underpins campaigns from counter-terrorism to nationalism, and how rituals, narratives, and silences produce emotional consent.
Bringing together critical security studies, political sociology, and cultural analysis, I contribute to the study of affective governance by offering empirically grounded, theoretically nuanced accounts of how power feels. Through my work on legitimacy, memory, and discourse, I show how affect is central to the architecture of authority in contemporary China.
Gender, Power, and the Politics of Representation
My research examines how gender is entangled with state power, nationalism, and security in China. From the revolutionary legacy of Qiu Jin to contemporary feminist activism, I explore how women are represented, governed, and resist — often within contradictory frames of empowerment and control.
Bridging feminist theory and critical security studies, my work contributes to Gender Studies by centering emotion, embodiment, and political discourse in both policy and everyday life. Through writing on menstruation politics, population planning, and gendered resistance, I seek to illuminate how gender shapes — and is shaped by — the logics of governance.