Xiaoling Chen

Xiaoling Chen holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of Colorado Boulder (2025) and a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Colorado Denver (2018). Her research examines the roles of infrastructural power in China’s COVID-19 response and Chinese multidirectional mobility. Her current book project, Zero-COVID: Infrastructure, State Power, and Violence in Contemporary China, examines how the party-state co-opted and repurposed the biotech industry, technology corporations, public security systems, public institutes, and grassroots networks for COVID-19 containment. Her new book project employs longitudinal multi-sited, multi-scalar ethnography to examine how Chinese migrants respond to hegemonic forces and build, access, and reconfigure infrastructures for livelihood, mobility, and civic engagement, offering comparative perspectives across China, Singapore, Japan, and the “West.” Her work has appeared in international journals and edited volumes, including Critical Asian Studies, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Made in China, and Human Organization.

 

Xiaoling is currently an in-residence Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS). Supported by NUS and a Global Indo-Pacific Mobility Fellowship funded by the Max Weber Stiftung, she is visiting the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo from August to October 2026 for fieldwork and academic exchange.