OYCF is pleased to announce that 2023 OYCF-Chow Fellowship for Field Research in China is open for application. 

Since 2018, Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) has provided several fellowships to support field research in China, funded by the generous donations by Gregory C. and Paula K. Chow to OYCF.  The fellowship provides up to $5,000 to graduate students in humanities and social sciences in a U.S. or Canadian university to conduct fieldwork in China for their thesis projects.  

Priority will be given to research projects focusing on contemporary economic, social, cultural, or political issues in China, but historical or comparative studies with substantial amount of fieldwork to be conducted in China are also eligible for consideration.

Fellowship recipients will be announced on the OYCF website as OYCF-Chow Fellows.

The Overseas Young Chinese Forum is pleased to announce the 2022 OYCF-Chow Fellows. The fellowship aims to support the following research projects.

Ran Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Her project involves multi-method functional analysis of the stone tools from the Peiligang site in North China, to discuss the changes of technology in the origin and development of early agriculture, and explore the dynamic relationships between humans and the environment in East Asia.

Teng Ge is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. His project examines how local stratifications contribute to global sociopolitical hierarchy based on an empirical study of Chinese professional basketball labor market. 

Yen-Ting Hsu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His project seeks to illuminate urban character formation in the era of neoliberalism by looking at the urban politics and governance of heritage-making in 21st-century Taipei.

Fan Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His project investigates the political economy of conservation and development in contemporary China in its high-profile, new National Park system through the case of the recently declared Giant Panda National Park.

Xiaogao Zhou is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Their project examines credibility struggles and jurisdictional conflicts in outlining what constitutes appropriate healthcare for transgender people in China through a multi-sited ethnography.

Overseas Young Chinese Forum congratulates the following five recipients of the 2021 OYCF-Chow Fellowship for Field Research in China: 

Ke Nie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on the governance of artistic creativity in China in the context of the rapid digitization of Chinese cultural industries. 

Catherine Park is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research probes the phenomena of globalizing education in urban China by discerning how linkages between urban development, novel educational practices in K-12 education, and everyday aspirations of parents and students constitute experimentations towards globality at various different levels of Chinese society. 

Danping Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at Columbia University. Her research traces the anti-cancer efforts of the Chinese Communist Party and the experience of Chinese cancer patients, with a special focus on the case study of esophageal cancer in Linxian, Henan province. 

Bolun Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research explores the similarities and disparities of informational capitalism across different political-economic regimes via a multiple sites ethnography with a Chinese cloud computing company in its various projects overseas.

Mengyang Zhao is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research documents and analyzes the rise of platform video game work in China, which includes a wide array of online video game services attracting millions of gig workers during the past decade.

In this fieldwork report, Harvard sociology PhD candidate Fangsheng Zhu explains how his turn away from China's education policy led to interesting encounters with schools for migrant children, tutoring agencies, and reformist schools in China. 

University of Chicago history PhD candidate Spencer Stewart explains how he stumbled upon archives about Lumian No. 1 (鲁棉一号), an important variety developed by Chinese cotton scientists in 1961-76, during his fieldwork investigation of cotton science and rural reform in war-time China.

University of Southern California sociology PhD candidate Shang Liu shares stories about three NGO workers in China during his 2019 fieldwork in China.

University of Maryland political science PhD candidate Jiun-Da Liu shares his 2019 fieldwork observations about the development of "green bond" market in China, its role in environmental financing and climate change governance, and the question of coal.

A 2018 OYCF-Chow fellow, Di Wang is a Phd candidate in the department of sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In this fieldwork report (in Chinese), she explores the complexities of gender and sexuality by relating stories of gay and lesbian couples in China.

A 2018 OYCF-Chow fellow, Kevin Luo is a PhD candidate in the department of history at University of Toronto. In this fieldwork report (in Chinese), he explores the role of land reforms in the state-building processes in mainland China and Taiwan.