Ruoxi Liu is a departmental lecturer at the School of Global and Area Studies, at the University of Oxford. She completed her PhD from the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, supervised by Professor Christel Lane. Her thesis, entitled ‘The Meaning of Being Independent: Precarities of Work and Lifestyles and Alternative-Seeking among Chinese Self-Employed Cultural Workers’, investigates the trends of ‘individuality’, ‘creativity’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-sufficiency’' in China vis-a-vis its authoritarian context and the neoliberal tendencies.
Based on an ethnographic study from May 2020 to April 2021 across a number of Chinese cities, Ruoxi’s PhD research highlighted their alternative-seeking against various precarities in a context full of rising uncertainties. This work contributes to a more nuanced understanding of cultural/creative work, cultural/creative workers, and their communities, and develops new insights into the individual-society relationship, individual agency, and self-sufficiency at the grassroots levels in China.
Ruoxi’s primary research interests lie in investigating individual agency, grassroots creativity, and community activism(s) under restricted socio-economic-political contexts. Her research has focused on the self-employed/independent workers, freelancers, informal workers, cultural workers, and alternative communities in contemporary China.
Dr Ruoxi Liu is also a research affiliate at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. Throughout her research and life practices, Ruoxi is keen on exploring and developing ‘alternatives.’
