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Research Interests
Urbanization; real estate; architectural design; built environment; urban lifestyle; middle class
Research Area(s)
China (Jing-Jin-Ji city cluster)
Profile
Xinyan Luan joined the Department ‘Anthropology of Politics and Governance’ as a PhD student in January 2024. She is also part of the research group “Constructing Urban Futures in Asia” headed by Christoph Brumann. She holds a M.Sc. in China in Comparative Perspective from the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a B.A. in German Language and Literature at the University of Science and Technology Beijing. Before beginning her PhD, Xinyan also worked at a non-governmental think tank in Beijing.
Her doctoral research looks at the built environment and its political economy in context of urban construction in China, particularly from the perspective of the housing property market. As a site not only of domesticity but also a potential realm for engaging with the wider society, housing embodies people’s aspirations and anxieties regarding the possibilities of a better life. Seeking to unravel the dynamics involved in “building the future”, her ethnographic research focuses on engaged city-builders – real estate developers, planners, architects etc. – to investigate how their professional work is profoundly transforming both the urban landscape as well as social formations in contemporary China.
Besides her passion for urban anthropology, Xinyan is also interested in political thought and the question of how power and violence are located in everyday life. Building upon literature on legal pluralism in colonial and post-colonial contexts, her M.Sc. dissertation compared the legal dilemmas facing Muslims in India and China to examine how state-centred law narrows the meaning of order and justice.