Team Members
Haiqing Yu
Chief Investigator
Professor Haiqing Yu is an ARC Future Fellow (2021-2025) and Professor of Media and Communication at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University. She is also an Associate Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. She is a critical media studies scholar with expertise on Chinese digital media, communication and culture and their sociopolitical and cultural impact in China, Australia and the Asia Pacific. Her current projects examine the social implications of China’s social credit system, technological innovation, and digital transformation; China’s digital presence in Australasia; and Chinese-language digital/social media in Australia. Haiqing is the co-editor of Anthem Series on Digital China.
For a full list of Haiqing’s publications: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8368-4214
Hugh Davies
Research Fellow
Dr Hugh Davies is a postdoctoral research fellow at RMIT in Melbourne. As a media researcher and curator, he studies games and digital culture in the Asia Pacific Region. Since 2020, Hugh has co-authored two books on videogames and sits on the board of the Chinese Digital Games and Research Association (Chinese DiGRA). Previously he was senior lecturer within the Media: Screen + Sound program at La Trobe University and co-director of the Centre for Creative Arts. Prior to academic life, Hugh was a multiplatform producer at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Email: hugh.davies@rmit.edu.au
Xuanzi Xu
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr Xuanzi Xu received her PhD at the University of Sydney in 2020 and her study focuses on how ordinary Chinese internet users’ everyday news engagement contributes to the configuration of online public spheres in China. More broadly, she is interested in the interplay between the ICTs, civil society and the state and in exploring the political implications of the unfinished information and communication revolution.
Email: xuxuanzi2015@gmail.com
Wynston Lee
Research Assistant
Wynston Lee is a PhD candidate at RMIT’s School of Media and Communication, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and Digital Ethnography Research Centre. His PhD dissertation takes a comparative Western-Chinese approach to examining China’s social credit systems, with senior supervision and financial support from Professor Haiqing Yu and her ARC Future Fellowship, and associate supervision from Professor Julian Thomas.
Email: S3888145@student.rmit.edu.au
Sijun Shen
Research Assistant
Sijun Shen is a Ph.D. candidate in Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University. Her thesis project aims to make sense of the excessivity, extremity and the popularity of China’s eat-streaming in its political-economic-social context using psychoanalytic theories.
Email: sijun.shen@monash.edu