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School of Journalism and Communication
Associate Professor
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (since 9/2005)
Primary Tasks: research, teaching, coordination of the MA program Global Communication
Academic Profile
My research focuses on the intersections between communicative practice, transnational migration, space and place-making.
One current project explores how migrants create hyperlocality. Drawing from Baudrillard’s work, new information technology discourse, and online journalism, I examine the reproduction of diasporic localities in a globalized world. The ethnographic study of Uyghurs from China in Germany and the United States illustrates how migrants reproduce and interconnect physical and identity locations through signifying practices on a global scale. The project shows how the creation of hyperlocalities further undermines the equation of territory-ethnos-culture and situates transnational diasporic activism within a web of signifying practices by migrants, diasporic organizations, transnational advocacy organizations, and the international human rights discourse.
Another current project examines the intersections between globalization, forced migration, space, and new media technologies. It focuses on studying the role of satellite TV, cell phones, and the Internet in the lives of asylum seekers and how those help create and navigate political, economic, and sociocultural interaction spaces and transcend and/or reinforce the arrested mobility of asylum seekers. The results can be used to encourage governments and law-making bodies to understand the role of ICTs and the media in forced migrants’ lives and use them to help people during the often lengthy asylum processes to develop their potential.
Education
Ph.D. Communication
University of Washington/USA
M.A. English Philology and Organizational
Management
University of Mannheim/Germany
