Profile
Minhua Ling

Minhua LING

Associate Professor, Anthropology and Sociology
Spoken languages
Chinese, English
Areas of expertise
  • Urbanisation
  • Migration and Mobility
  • Sustainability
  • State-society relations
  • Foodways
  • Socioecological relations
Geographical Region of Expertise
  • China
  • East Asia

Profile


PhD from Yale University

Minhua Ling is a sociocultural anthropologist and uses ethnography as a basis to explore three sets of related research interests: 1) the various forms of mobility and how they are shaped, experienced, and interpreted; 2) the (re)making of inequality in everyday life; and 3) the challenges to sustainable livelihood facing underprivileged individuals and communities. Her book The Inconvenient Generation: Migrant Youth Coming of Age on Shanghai’s Edge (2020, Stanford University Press) offers the first longitudinal study of China’s second-generation rural-to-urban migrant youth navigating from schools to labour and consumer markets and examines urban governance through everyday practices of inclusion and exclusion. Currently she is working on multiple research projects including a second book project on rural transformation and its socioecological implications in China after three decades of rural-urban migration and state-led urbanization.

Prior to joining Geneva Graduate Institute, Dr. Ling was a 2022-23 Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor with tenure between 2013 and 2022.

At Geneva Graduate Institute, Dr. Ling teaches courses and supervises theses in the areas of mobility, urbanization, food and health, socio-ecological sustainability, and sociocultural transformation in China and East Asia in addition to anthropological research methodology.

 

publication


Book


Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Book Chapters


Special Issues


Book Reviews

  • 2021. “The Children of China’s Great Migration by Rachel Murphy.” The China Quarterly 247: 910-912.
  • 2017. “Youth Cultures in China by Jeroen de Kloet and Anthony Fung.” China Perspectives 2017/3: 70.
  • 2016. “Class Work: Vocational Schools and China’s Urban Youth by T. E. Woronov.”  American Anthropologist 118 (3): 701-702.
  • 2015. “Class in Contemporary China by David S. Goodman.” Anthropos 110 (2): 622‒623.