Trained as an architect in Shanghai and Barcelona, I situate my research at the intersection of science and technology studies, consumption and consumer culture, and environment and society. Before relocating to the Netherlands to take up a postdoctoral position in Environmental Humanities at Leiden University, I worked on the project "Balancing Heritage and Sustainability in the Retrofit of Postwar Curtain Wall Highrises," funded by the Irish Research Council. My doctoral dissertation examines three architectural establishments that mediated state power and economic life, shaping the transformation of the commercial landscape in Chinese society.
At the IIAS, I will work on my current book project, Building Freshness: Refrigerated Space for Foodway and Techno-politics in Treaty-Port China. It aims to historicize the foodscape shaped by the adoption of mechanical refrigeration in treaty-port China from the late 19th century to the 1940s when society encountered and started embracing artificial cold. From public venues to private premises, refrigerated space, as socio-technical systems, empowered diverse subjects and created a contact zone that linked the interest of every actor embedded in transnational networks. It participated as an infrastructure in modernizing the foodway, a process infused with mediation and frictions at local and global levels contesting the incomplete cold chain, which is commonplace nowadays.