Bio

My research relates primarily to social relations and social change in contemporary rural China. I have conducted ethnographic research and published books relating to gender relations and women’s work in rural China; rural-urban migration, the experiences of rural migrants in Chinese cities, and the situation of the ‘left-behind’ in rural China; gender and development discourses in China; and women’s participation and representation in Chinese village governance. I am currently writing an historical ethnography, which draws on archival research as well as fieldwork in a village in Henan to chart and explain change and continuity in central China’s agrarian family economy and social relations over the past century.