Jacqueline Zhenru LIN, Dr

I was born in a Cantonese river town in South China. First, I began my undergraduate studies in 2008 in business administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shaw College). However, I gradually realised I was not cut out for it during my two-year internship in a local consultancy firm in Wan Chai. Fortunately, the General Education at CUHK allowed me to explore other exciting subjects outside of my major, ranging from archaeology to film studies. In a class on cultural heritage, I discovered the pleasure of socio-cultural anthropology and became passionate about doing ethnographic research. My graduate training started in Gender Studies (anthropology as the home discipline) at CUHK (M.Phil. 2016), then continued in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge (PhD 2021). 

Through long-term intensive fieldwork, my current book project delves into how digital technology is reshaping grassroots volunteering and local charities in contemporary China. It offers a historical and ethnographic exploration of a redress movement that seeks to honor and support Kuomintang veterans who fought in the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45) but faced difficulties in post-1949 China. This project is an extension of my first monograph, ‘Making National Heroes’ (HKU Press 2024), which analyzes the intertwining of gender and nationalism in local volunteering for KMT veterans in Hunan province in the Chinese Mainland.

I am currently collaborating on a book with Professor Adam Yuet Chau at Cambridge University, focusing on the formation of modern Chinese polity. Additionally, I am engaged in a new research endeavor, exploring the transnational commemorative network of the Second World War involving NGOs in the People’s Republic of China and overseas Chinese communities in Myanmar, Thailand, and India. I have also been invited to contribute as a reviewer by editors from ‘New Media & Society’ and ‘Memory Studies’. 

war commemoration, local memories, digital China, gendered nationalism, Chinese masculinity