My doctoral research examined the politics and poetics of art and migration through a multi-sited ethnography of different generations of so-called ‘British Chinese’ cultural workers (in theatre, literature and the visual arts), whose translocal lives spanned Britain, South Africa, Italy, China and Taiwan.
I am Principal Investigator of the British Academy/Leverhulme funded project, ‘Becoming East Asian: Race, Ethnicity and the Politics of Belonging in Britain’ with Tamsin Barber at Oxford Brookes University. This research grew out of a project which examined the experiences of young people racialized as East Asian as consumers and producers in the night-time economy, the challenges they face and how they draw on transnational and global youth cultures to create a sense of belonging.
My new research project on racial inequalities in the creative and cultural industries is entitled BEAST: British East Asians on Screen and in Television, and has been funded by the Department of Sociology, City.
This research explores the experiences of British East Asian actors in the film and television sector in the context of growing public debates over racial discrimination, exclusion and inequalities in the wider creative and cultural industries.