Professor Rachel Murphy
Professor of Chinese Development and Society
St Antony's College
Rachel Murphy obtained her doctorate in Sociology from Cambridge, where she was a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship, and then she was senior lecturer at the University of Bristol. At Oxford, she was Head of Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, Research Director, Senior Tutor at St Antony's College, and she is a former President of the British Association of Chinese Studies.
Her research on migration, demography, urbanization, digital technology, and gendered family care practices is fieldwork intensive. Projects and collaborations are supported by Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, Volkswagen Stiftung, Academy of Medical Sciences, ESRC and John Fell Fund. She also co-ordinates the SSD hub on global gender and care.
The Children of China's Great Migration (2020), enabled by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, draws on longitudinal fieldwork with children, caregivers and migrants from landlocked provinces in eastern China, providing a rare exploration of staying, education, and families' gender and intergenerational relationships. How Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China (2002) studies returnee entrepreneurs. Recent articles appear in Child & Family Social Work, The Sociological Review, Geoforum, Population and Development Review etc.She serves on the editorial boards of Gender and Society; Modern China; and Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies.
Supervisees
Akida Anwar; Kefan Xue; Haiyun Zhao; Huiru Wang; Yujiao Xing; Yi Qie
- Sociology
- Development studies
- Anthropological demography
- Migration; demography; gender; care; agrarian change; urbanisation; family; children; childrearing; digital technologies; qualitative methods.
Research countries:
- China