Theresa Irigoyen-Lopez

I am a doctoral candidate in Area Studies (China) at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Before starting my DPhil, I completed an MA in Chinese Studies at SOAS where I mostly focused on the role of literature and film in contemporary Chinese culture and wrote my dissertation on the representation of transport and migrant workers in Chinese cinema. These topics of migration, mobility and moving images have always fascinated me and I have also explored them from other disciplines during my previous studies, including a BSE in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, an MSc in Sustainable Energy Futures from Imperial, and an MRes in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment from Cambridge. My current DPhil project focuses on Chinese urban anthropology and labour migration, but my broader research interests include concepts and expressions of identity, Marxist geography and transnationalism, and the impact of post-socialism on cultural imaginations and desires.