Comparative Digital Cultures
This project compares women food influencers’ experiences on Instagram and
Xiaohongshu (Red). I examine how they position themselves “in and against the
platform”: working within platform rules while also negotiating and resisting
them in order to retain agency and creativity. The project also develops the
concept of the “emotional contract” to explain influencers’ relationships with
brands, particularly the expectations, obligations and guilt that can make
under-compensated work difficult to refuse.
Lying Flat & Everyday Resistance
Together with Dr Jiaming Li (University of Birmingham), Dr Edward Granter
(University of Birmingham) and Prof Jeremy Aroles (University of York), I
examine “lying flat” creators on Chinese social media and ask how everyday
resistance can be sustained over time. We track how creators turn anti-work
aspirations into narratives and aesthetics, make alternative ways of living
materially viable, and continually adapt their practices in response to
platform governance and wider social pressures.
Eastern Gaze
Together with Dr Wendi Li (Monash University), I reflect on the challenges of
navigating academia as scholars from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
Drawing on our everyday experiences of research and teaching, we examine our
positionalities within Western institutions, the Western gaze we encounter,
and the counter-gaze we turn back to interrogate and challenge coloniality.
Counter Research
As co-founders of
CRIMSON,
we explore how counter-research should not be
understood simply as opposition to forms of power that have historically
dominated Western imaginaries. Instead, we approach the “counter” as
context-specific, fluid, and negotiated — a space for reworking dominant
assumptions about knowledge and research.