I am an anthropologist, currently involved in research with the Paiwan indigenous people of southern Taiwan. I am particularly interested in the revitalization of forms of craft and related issues of indigenous identity formation, cultural transmission and indigenous activism.
I have research and teaching interests in the anthropology of craft, materiality, work, and apprenticeship, with a regional focus on China and Taiwan. I obtained my PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2007. My current project aims to generate a new understanding of the ways in which the material culture of Indigenous Peoples mediate political relations as they move between symbolic, economic and political contexts. My empirical focus is on the Paiwan indigenous group of Taiwan, one of the 16 officially recognised Indigenous People of Taiwan.
In my past research, I have addressed issues of craft production - including materiality, apprenticeship, the social roles of artisans, and notions of authenticity - in China and Taiwan. My book Reinventing Craft in China reflects on the consequences of China's modernisation projects – collectivisation and industrialisation in the 1950s, and privatisation as of the 1980s – on the nation's crafts, and on modes of apprenticeship and transmission of craft-related knowledge. I have also conducted fieldwork in Taiwan's main centre of ceramics production to understand new concerns with crafts and industrial heritage in the country.