Xin Zhan is a Teaching Associate in the Sociology of Media and Culture at the University of Cambridge. Her research examines how emerging computational technologies reshape subjectivity and technologies of the self.
Her current book project, Coding Future: Coders, Capitalism, and the Tech Dream—based on her doctoral ethnographic research—offers an account of coding as a medium of aspirational self-making among individuals structurally excluded from formal education and employment. The book addresses the question: What does it mean to program not only computer code, but also one’s own future?
Her postdoctoral research project, Beyond the Couch: The Emerging Intimacies of AI Therapy, investigates the forms of “auto-intimacy” fostered through chatbot companionship and AI mental health interventions. Taken together, these projects trace how digital technologies mediate both the pursuit of futures and the cultivation of selfhood.
Alongside her academic work, Xin is a mental health practitioner with experience in community mental health support, suicide mitigation, and child and adolescent mental health, and has received further training in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and psychoanalysis. She completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 2024 and subsequently held a postdoctoral appointment as Teaching and Research Associate in Social Anthropology before joining Sociology.
