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About Us
CHEN Ju-chen
CHEN Ju-chen


Research Fellow (Honorary)


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Educational qualification Ph.D., Anthropology, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
MA, Anthropology, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
BS, Psychology, National Taiwan University

Introduction

Dr. CHEN Ju-chen joined the Department of Anthropology at CUHK as an adjunct assistant professor in August 2009, and became a lecturer in August 2010. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University (2009). She has conducted intensive ethnographic research in Beijing and Xi’an, China as well as in Hong Kong. Her Ph.D. dissertation, titled Capital Dreams: Global Consumption, Urban Imagination, and Labor Migration in Late Socialist Beijing, addresses the remaking of Beijing, with a focus on social differentiations within and beyond the city, under the impacts of the late socialist Chinese state and the expansion of global capitalism in the early 2000s. Dr. Chen has currently three continuing research; all of them centre on the concept of aspiration. The first one focus on Mingong, migrant laborer, in China. She examines their dreams revolve around building or purchasing family homes. She analyzes how their experience illuminates China’s changing urban-rural relations. The second one extends her interest in the impacts of migration experience on womanhood into a study of Filipino domestic workers (FDWs) in Hong Kong. The study focuses on how FDWs realize their dreams and subjectivity through participating in beauty pageants. Dr. Chen also explores how their education background and career choice intertwined with each other. The third research focuses on independent music event organisers and performers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This project takes an economic anthropology approach to see how the independent music community challenges capitalist aspiration. Dr. Chen teaches courses on gender, anthropological methods, China, political economy, ethnicity and media.

Geographical areas of research

Mainland China and Hong Kong

Research interests

Labor migration, globalization, gender, music, economic anthropology, anthropology of senses, visual anthropology, anthropology of China

Courses taught

ANTH 2310/UGEC 2653 Gender and Culture

ANTH 2410A/UGEA 2180A Chinese Culture and Society

ANTH 5020 Anthropological Field Methods

ANTH 5670 Gender and Culture

GENA 2192 Women, Men and Culture

Current research

The Mirage of Homes: A Photo-ethnographic Study of Migrant Workers’ “Abandoned” Homes in China’s Villages and Third Tier Cities.

Sunday Catwalks: Life Aspirations of Overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong.

Awards and scholarships

Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award 2011, CUHK

Fellowships for Doctoral Candidates in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2002 – 2004, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 2001 – 2002, The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, USA

Predoctoral Research Grant, 2000 – 2001, The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., USA

Dissertation Research Award, 1999 – 2001, Cultural Anthropology Program, National Science Foundation, USA

Internal position held

Fellow, Institute of Future Cities, CUHK

Selected Publications
Book chapter
2015 “Sunday Catwalks: Self-Making of Filipino Migrant Women in Hong Kong.” In The Age of Asian Migration Vol. II. Yuk Wah Chan and Heidi Fong, eds. Cambridge Scholars Publishing (in print).
Dissertation
2009 Capital Dreams: Global Consumption, Urban Imagination and Labor Migration in Late Socialist Beijing. Dissertation. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI. 2009. (Publication No. [3350151])
Paper in progress
“民工夢想家:對中國農村和三線城市中「廢棄」房屋的影像人類學研究,” a working paper.

“East Asian Anthropology: Reflections from the Positioning of a “Taiwanese” Anthropologist,” a working paper.

“Dreaming of Home: Family, housing and the children of migrant laborers in China,” a working paper.

Others
2015 Matinee on Sundays: Cultural Festivals and Beauty Pageants of Overseas Filipino Workers in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong Discovery 88: 58-65. 

2014

Yearning for a Complete Home: Migrant Workers on the Road. In Hong Kong Discovery 81: 62-69.

Conference activities and invited lectures
December 2014 “Sunday Catwalks: Self-Making of Filipino Migrant Women in Hong Kong.” The Annual Meeting of American Anthropological Association. Washington, D.C., USA, December 3.
October 2014 “民工夢想家:對中國農村和三線城市中「廢棄」房屋的影像人類學研究.” 臺灣人類學民族學會年會. 臺灣:台北。October 4.
May 2014 “East Asian Anthropology: Reflections from the Positioning of a “Taiwanese” Anthropologist.” The IUAES 2014 conference. Chiba, Tokyo, Japan.
May 2014 “Beauty Pageant and the OFW communities in Hong Kong. Chair and Presenter. A talk for the series of Public and Community Arts, the Institute of Future Cities, CUHK. May 9.
September 2013 “‘Dionysian’ Filipinas on Sundays: Identity and community of Filipino overseas workers in Hong Kong,” the Asian Migration and the Global Asian Diasporas Conference, City University of Hong Kong, September 6
November 2011 “Legacies of migration: Family, housing and children of migrant laborers in China” (Paper summary delivered by other panelists), the Annual Conference of American Anthropological Association, Montreal, Canada
October 2011 “四海為「家」:中國民工的老家概念與親屬關係,” the Annual Meeting of Taiwan Society For Anthropology and Ethnology at Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
September 2011 “Dreaming of Home: Family, housing and the children of migrant laborers in China,” the International Forum of Association for East Asian Anthropology, National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku), Osaka, Japan
December 2010 “Gender and Chinese Society,” invited presentation at Sun Fong Chung College, Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong
November 2010 “An urban family ‘united’ and a migrant family ‘divided:’ rethinking family, property, and urban development in Beijing,” the Annual Conference of American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, USA
December 2009 “Family Dreams and National Aspirations: Family House Building by Migrant Laborers in Beijing and China’s Urbanization and Economic Restructuring,” the Annual Conference of American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, USA
October 2009 “Family Dreams and the Reproduction of Urban-Rural Division: Family House Building by Migrant Laborers in Beijing,” invited presentation at Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
October 2009 “Migrant Laborers in Beijing: Social Divisions in Late Socialist China Past and Present,” invited presentation for The Hong Kong Anthropological Society at The Hong Kong Museum of History
July 2009 “The Beijing Central Business District: A ‘Contact Zone’ for Business Professionals and Migrant Laborers in late Socialist China,” the Annual Conference of Society for East Asian Anthropology, Taipei, Taiwan
November 2003 “Ruoshi Qunti (Disadvantaged Groups): the Negotiation of the Subject Position of Migrant Laborers in Post-socialist China,” the Annual Conference of American Anthropological Association, Chicago, USA
July 2002 “The Forbidden City and Sanlitun: Leisure Life and ‘the Ordinary Beijingers’,” invited presentation at the Summer Workshop on Culture, Cognition and Emotion, Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University
May 2002 “The Forbidden City and Sanlitun: Leisure Life and ‘the Ordinary Beijingers’,” the 3rd Taiwanese Anthropological Graduate Student Conference, Taipei, Taiwan
April 2002 “Emerging from Beijing: Transnational Professionals and Local Communities,” the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Washington D.C., USA
November 2000 “Luo Dayou Is Our Youth: The Making of Yuppies (Young Urban Professional) in Beijing,” the Annual Conference of American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, USA
1994 “Is the Lack of Undesirable Stress a Valid Criterion for Melancholia,” Co-authored with Huei-chen Ko, Su-chen Li, and Ru-band Lu, the Annual Meeting of the Chinese Psychiatry Association, Taiwan
Professional duties and services

Academic advisor for the anthropology department undergraduate summer field trip to Taitung,Taiwan (May-June, 2014) and the post-trip exhibition in Hui Gallery, New Asia College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (October 2014).

Academic Advisor, New Asia College/ Yale University Student Exchange Program, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2010-2011)

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