ZHANG Liangliang is Assistant professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2022, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She also holds an M.Phil. in Social Anthropology (Medical Anthropology Concentration) from Cambridge and a B.A. in International Comparative Studies from Duke University.

Liangliang’s research explores the intersection of citizenship, wellbeing, and lived ecology in a globalizing China. Her current book project, Embodying Chinese Citizenship: Self-Transformation and Social Innovation from China’s Revitalizing Ruralities, examines personally and socially transformative practices within grassroots education and healing initiatives based in rural China, with an amplifying reach.

As an engaged anthropologist and educator, Liangliang is committed to community-engaged, co-creative ethnography and transformative experiential learning, guided by the core ethics of permaculture—earth care, people care, and fair share. She is the founder and curator of the Inclusive Ecology Collective, a Think-and-Act Network based at NYUSH that leverages interdisciplinary research, intergenerational wisdom, and intercosmological expertise to foster urgently needed systemic transformations in response to the planetary ecological crisis.

Her research, teaching, and activism converge around the central theme of relational regeneration—nurturing generative connections with the self, other beings, and the Earth.

Research Interests

• Citizenship Practices
• Holistic Wellbeing
• Lived Ecology
• Grassroots Education Innovation
• Co-Creative Activism

Courses Taught

• GCHN-SHU 277: Medicine in China
• GCHN-SHU 177: Good Death: China and Comparative Perspectives
• PCIX-SHU 102: Making a “Good Life” in Rural Guangdong Province (J-Term 2025 Project-based Ethnographic Fieldwork Course)
• PCIX-SHU 102: Making a “Good Education” for Migrant Children in Rural Guangdong Province (J-Term 2024 Project-based Ethnographic Fieldwork Course)