Welcome to my site. 

I am a Research Fellow at the University of Vienna where I previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the now completed ERC-funded project “Engineering a Trustworthy Society”. 

I examine how digital infrastructures are built “from above” and how citizens negotiate, resist and re-shape the orders they impose “from below”. This matters globally because every society now negotiates the gap between what digital systems promise and what people live. 

I grew up along Australia’s south-east coastline, surrounded by open meadows and quiet coastal towns, and later completed my PhD at the University of Wollongong where I conducted online ethnographic and discourse-based research on China’s Social Credit System. 

Theoretically, my work sits at the intersection of China’s domestic politics and global debates on technology, ethics and governance. Science, technology, and society studies and political sociology are the disciplines I share the strongest affinity with. 

Most of my work uses qualitative interview data and a mixture of qualitative and quantitative content analysis.

My writing has appeared in Journal of Contemporary China, Global Media and China, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, and Surveillance and Society. I have co-authored contributions for The Conversation, and 9Dash, and have presented my work at international conferences and policy dialogues across Europe, China, and Australia. 

I am a corresponding researcher for the China Data Analysis and Research Hub, a nonpartisan think tank in Vienna facilitating dialogue between scholars, policymakers, and civil society actors.

I am a native English speaker and possess advanced Mandarin, developed through over 12 years of formal study and multiple in-country visits and fieldwork.