The Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) is pleased to announce the six recipients of the 2025 OYCF-Chow Fellowship for Field Research in China. This fellowship supports outstanding doctoral students whose research advances the understanding of contemporary Chinese society through rigorous fieldwork.

We extend our warmest congratulations to the following scholars:

Lingxiao Chen, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, Emory University

Everyday Nationalism in Chinese Entertainment: Cultural Governance, Celebrity Agency, and Audience Reception.

Zhuoma(Drolma) Gadou, Ph.D. Candidate in Geography, University of Colorado

The End of Yaks? Tibetan Pastoralism at a Crossroads in a Globalized Industrial Food Regime.

Jingyi Guo, Ph.D. Candidate in Mass Communications & Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Pennsylvania State University

Homemakers of the Datafied State: Women’s Labor in Data-Driven Governance in China.

Zhaorui Lu, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of California, Irvine

Small-Feet Detectives, Gossipy Aunties: A Gendered History of Grassroots Urban Governance in China, 1949 to the Present.

Yixue Yang, Ph.D. Candidate in History and Science Studies, University of California, San Diego

Threads of Gendered Knowledge: Silk, Soil, and Rural Women in China’s Export Economy, 1949–1980.

Andrea Zhu, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

Greening Infrastructure Development: Transnational Environmental and Climate Finance Advocacy at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

These fellows exemplify academic excellence, interdisciplinary inquiry, and a deep commitment to advancing field-based research in China. We look forward to the insights and contributions they will bring to the scholarly community.

Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) is pleased to announce the inaugural recipients of the re-launched Student Engagement Grant. 

Program Grant

• China Reading & innovation Lab, Columbia University.

• Sociology Forums and Workshops, joint with The Center for the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC), University of Pennsylvania.

Single Event Grant

• Global China Paper Workshop, Northeastern University.

We congratulate the recipient groups and their organizers for taking the lead in creating local spaces for meaningful connections through educational activities that foster a deeper understanding of Chinese culture, society, history, and current affairs across diverse disciplinary backgrounds.

For more information on the Student Engagement Grant, including eligibility and application process, visit https://oycf.net/Students or contact SEG@oycf.net.

OYCF is delighted to announce that the application period for the 2025 OYCF-Chow Fellowship for Field Research in China is now open.

This fellowship, generously funded by Gregory C. and Paula K. Chow, provides graduate students in humanities and social sciences from U.S. or Canadian universities with an opportunity to conduct fieldwork in China for their thesis projects. Successful applicants can receive up to $5,000 in financial support.

Priority will be given to research projects focusing on contemporary economic, social, cultural, or political issues in China. However, historical or comparative studies with a substantial amount of fieldwork in China are also eligible for consideration.

The names of fellowship recipients will be officially announced on the OYCF website as distinguished OYCF-Chow Fellows. Don't miss this chance to advance your research and contribute to the understanding of critical issues in China. Apply now!

OYCF Announces the OYCF-Stilwell Fellowship on US-China Relations

The Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) is pleased to announce the launch of the OYCF-Stilwell Fellowship on US-China Relations. This new initiative is supported by the OYCF-Stilwell Education Fund and aims to advance understanding between the U.S. and China. 

OYCF-Stilwell Fellowships are intended to support students, scholars, professionals and practitioners who engage in research and/or public-facing projects that explore US-China exchange. These projects include scholarly or policy writing, documentaries, plays, podcasts, and other activities that contribute to mutual understanding and people-to-people exchange between the US and China.

Applicants must be currently enrolled in a U.S. university, or, if not a student, must have a demonstrated interest in US-China relations. One to two fellowships, totaling up to $10,000, will be awarded annually through a competition that takes place in the winter quarter.

Stay tuned for application details. A call for proposal will be issued in early 2025. 

Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) congratulates the following five recipients of the 2024 OYCF-Chow Fellowship for Field Research in China:

Yingru Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Her project examines the transformation of elderly care in China, focusing on the integration of technological innovation into senior care and its impact on existing care practices and relationships.

Junyi Han is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at Yale University. Her research examines the rise and fall of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance during Cold War through the prism of Yunnan province.

Shumeng Han is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, San Diego. Her project studies the politics of agricultural innovation in modern China by tracing the history of wheat seed development, production, and circulation from World War II (1931–1945) until the 1970s in Shaanxi province.

Pamela Tsui is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her project draws on a transnational framework to explore how Hong Kongers in Hong Kong and Toronto use money to construct and negotiate boundaries during turbulent times.

Liubing Xie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. His project explores how China's crafting of the affordable rental housing market is one of the emerging governing techniques to govern the heterogeneous migrant populations in large cities.

In this field report filed by Jiangjiang Wu, PhD candidate in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she reflects both on the rise of luxury retirement homes in China today and on the evolution in her own thinking about the institution. 

Overseas Young Chinese Forum congratulates the following five recipients of the 2023 OYCF-Chow Fellowship for Field Research in China:

Niall Chithelen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, San Diego. He studies the history of concrete in Mao-era China, and his project examines the relationship between construction, design, technology, and the natural environment in twentieth-century China.

Zhuang Han is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. His project explores the life of Chinese non-workers (San He Da Shen) to review the labor relation in the time of industrial restructuring from the perspective of reproduction.

Hsu Huang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. His project investigates how technological advances are made in a non-western context, drawing on the case of COVID vaccine development in China and Russia.

Xiangyi Ren is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Adopting a processual approach, her project empirically aims to explain the divergent organizational development of specialized trial organizations in China and theoretically aims to contribute to the literature on legal change.

Tong Xin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Boston University. Her research project seeks to understand the making of crisis and hope in contemporary China by following gender and sexuality knowledge production in sex education programs, educational spaces, and children’s everyday life.

OYCF is pleased to announce that 2023 OYCF-Chow Fellowship for Field Research in China is open for application. 

Since 2018, Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) has provided several fellowships to support field research in China, funded by the generous donations by Gregory C. and Paula K. Chow to OYCF.  The fellowship provides up to $5,000 to graduate students in humanities and social sciences in a U.S. or Canadian university to conduct fieldwork in China for their thesis projects.  

Priority will be given to research projects focusing on contemporary economic, social, cultural, or political issues in China, but historical or comparative studies with substantial amount of fieldwork to be conducted in China are also eligible for consideration.

Fellowship recipients will be announced on the OYCF website as OYCF-Chow Fellows.

The Overseas Young Chinese Forum is pleased to announce the 2022 OYCF-Chow Fellows. The fellowship aims to support the following research projects.

Ran Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Her project involves multi-method functional analysis of the stone tools from the Peiligang site in North China, to discuss the changes of technology in the origin and development of early agriculture, and explore the dynamic relationships between humans and the environment in East Asia.

Teng Ge is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. His project examines how local stratifications contribute to global sociopolitical hierarchy based on an empirical study of Chinese professional basketball labor market. 

Yen-Ting Hsu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His project seeks to illuminate urban character formation in the era of neoliberalism by looking at the urban politics and governance of heritage-making in 21st-century Taipei.

Fan Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His project investigates the political economy of conservation and development in contemporary China in its high-profile, new National Park system through the case of the recently declared Giant Panda National Park.

Xiaogao Zhou is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Their project examines credibility struggles and jurisdictional conflicts in outlining what constitutes appropriate healthcare for transgender people in China through a multi-sited ethnography.