Dr Ruoxi Liu's PhD research was supervised by Professor Christel Lane. Generously funded by Wing Yip Scholarship, Ruoxi was able to come to Cambridge to pursue the MPhil in Sociology (Marginality and Exclusion in 2018. Since then, her research has focused on the niche and marginalised groups in the developing contexts, particularly, self-employed/independent workers, freelancers, informal workers and small ethnic business owners, etc.
Ruoxi’s primary research interests lie in investigating individual agency and grassroots creativity under restricted social economic and political conditions. Fully funded by Cambridge Trust- CSC International Scholarship, Ruoxi’s PhD thesis project works on the self-employed/independent cultural workers in mainland China. From May 2020 to April 2021, Ruoxi conducted her fieldwork in several Chinese cities, including Guangzhou as a representative of the urban context, and Jingdezhen as a rural case. By adopting a mixture of qualitative methodologies (participant observation, in-depth interview and diary method), Ruoxi has investigated the Work-and-lifestyles, negotiation, self-realisation, and mobility of the Chinese cultural workers and highlighted their alternative-seeking against various precarities in a context full of rising uncertainties.
By examining the ‘independents’ in post-Socialist China who do cultural work, Ruoxi intends to understand the trends of ‘individuality’, ‘creativity’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-sufficiency’' vis-a-vis the authoritarian context and the neoliberal mentalities. Her work also 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.
Throughout her research and life practices, Ruoxi is keen on exploring and developing ‘alternatives.’
