Dr Qiu Yu Visiting Academic

18 September to 5 November 2023

Dr Qiu Yu (邱昱) is a social anthropologist interested in intimacy, migration, ethics, and identity politics. She has conducted empirical research on various forms of Afro-China encounters in Nigeria, Tanzania, and China. Holding an MPhil and a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Sociology from Tsinghua University, Dr Qiu is currently an associate professor (on tenure track) at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Department of Sociology at Zhejiang University.

Dr Qiu has two projects that explore the multi-directional migration and interactions between China and Africa. The first project, based on a decades-long investigation into the intimate lives of Nigerian migrants and their Chinese partners in South China since the 2010s, examines embodied desires, cultural changes, and identity politics brought about by Africa-China mobility and economic opportunities. The second project investigates the recent transnational Chinese Buddhism in the Swahihi-speaking region of East Africa. Specifically, it examines the evangelical project of Han Chinese Buddhism and the moral and social meanings and practices of ‘growing affinity’ (jieyuan) in a Chinese Buddhist monastery in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Her latest publications include Beyond the Method of Belief: Ethical Affinity and the Cultivation of Chinese Buddhist Spirituality in Tanzania (JRAI, forthcoming), Cleavage: Guangzhou, Covid-19 and China–Africa Friendship Politics (Journal of African Cultural Studies, 2021). She is also the co-translator of <以德为体> (The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom by James Laidlaw, Peking University Press, 2022.

View Dr Qiu Yu’s academic webpage here.