Zihan Xu (2023)

  • Research title: Crafting Wellbeing: Ceramic-making and quarter-life mobility in anxious China
  • Supervisor: Dr. Iza Kavedžija
Zihan Xu (2023)

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About

I am an aspiring medical and multimodal anthropologist, with an interdisciplinary background in medical anthropology (MPhil with Distinction, Oxford), psychology (MA, Columbia), and creative media (BA, CUC). My research interests involve health and wellbeing, affect and emotion, art and improvisation, movement and mobility. Nourished by both my scholarly and bodily practice, my ethnographic research mobilises apprenticeship-based, multimodal, and experimental methodologies. I am also the founder and convenor of the Health and Wellbeing Discussion Group hosted by CUSAS.

Research

Against the backdrop of an increasingly anxious social atmosphere in contemporary China and worldwide, this project explores how young Chinese migrants ‘craft’ wellbeing in creative practice and everyday life. Rather than considering wellbeing as a positive individual state to be achieved, I take anthropological approaches to reveal the ambivalent nature of wellbeing, highlighting affective and creative skills involved in the intersubjective process of living well. Research will be based on ethnographic fieldwork with young migrants in Jingdezhen, the capital of Chinese porcelain. Of central inquiry are the two entwined processes: that of crafting ceramics through intense practice, repeated failure, and constant improvisation; and the process of crafting everyday life as these young adults move through uncertain or transitional periods of life, such as after quitting a job or leaving a relationship. Bridging medical anthropology with studies of art, affect, and mobility, this research seeks to uncover the ambivalent, relational, and moving process of wellbeing. Combining conventional participant observation with artistic, multimodal, and experimental methodologies, it reimagines creative ways of living well in an unwell world.

Research interests

Health and wellbeing; affect and emotion; art and craft, improvisation and creativity; body, sensory perception, and enskilment; movement, migration, and mobility; life transitions and life course; multimodal and experimental ethnography; anthropological theory.