Dr Mingdan Wu

I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. My research examines how low-income people experience state policies in China and the United Kingdom. I am particularly interested in how people mobilise meaning-making resources to make a living, how these practices are shaped by cultural norms and structures of gender, race and class, and what they reveal about labour, development and governance.

I completed my PhD and MA in the fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology at University College London, where I developed the view that language and cultural studies should engage with broader social questions and consequences. My doctoral research drew on ethnographic fieldwork with people experiencing housing insecurity in the UK, examining how they navigated poverty, welfare institutions, grassroots organisations and the criminalisation of rough sleeping. My earlier research explored the relationship between communicative, gendered and embodied labour and capitalist forms of consumption in the service industry.

At OSGA, my current project examines declining trust in state welfare and the sustainability of social insurance in China amid population ageing and wider global economic, environmental and digital uncertainties. Across my research, I aim to develop comparative perspectives on welfare and precarity, connecting everyday experiences in particular regions with broader global transformations in political economy and society.