The Intimacy project, led by the Deputy Director of the SOAS China Institute, featured in its annual review, which recalled successes in teaching, research, collaboration, training and events throughout 2014 to 2015.

SOAS China Institute Deputy Director secures major research grant to study modern Chinese family life

The five-year project, titled ‘Doing Intimacy: A Multisited Ethnography of Modern Chinese Family Life’, will provide the first comprehensive study of practices of intimacy in Chinese families, their intertwining with gender and intergenerational dynamics, and interrelations with local and global change. The project will lie at the core of the SOAS China Institute’s research theme on “China: Population and Change.”

New light on global questions of family, development and modernity

The research will be rooted in case studies of Chinese communities in urban and rural China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. These sites have been selected to bring to the fore how particular socio-economic- political and cultural configurations feature in intimate family practices. The project will provide sophisticated answers to complicated questions such as ‘How are Chinese families changing and adapting to wider social changes?’ and ‘How do different socio-economic and political configurations shape family behaviours?’