Tong Xin

Matriculated September 2019

Research Interests

Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Education, Knowledge, Sexuality and Gender, Children and Youth, Community-engaged Research, China

About

Tong is broadly interested in issues of medicine, knowledge and education, gender and sexuality. Her current work focuses on sex education for school-aged children in contemporary China. In this project, Tong seeks to understand how educational efforts answer to and interact with social concerns and social changes. At the same time, she also examines how children experience different sex and gender messages, explicit or hidden.

Tong is also interested in exploring engaged research methods that allow her to work with research participants collaboratively. In 2019, she finished a Photovoice project, learning from children how they identify and talk about sex and gender messages in a southern China village. Based on this project, she curated two exhibitions, one in the local reading room and one in an art museum.

Before starting her PhD study, Tong worked as a qualitative researcher and project officer in public health institutes in Beijing, China. Her work experiences on sexual and reproductive health laid a foundation for her theoretical interest in governance, discourse, knowledge production, embodiment, subjectivity, and everyday life.

Tong holds a master’s degree in Medical Anthropology & Cross-Cultural Practice from Boston University School of Medicine. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Sociology at Shandong University in Jinan, China.

Awards & Grants

• Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF)-Chow Award. (July 2023)
• Young Curators Program Grant, Awarded by Chinese National Museum of Ethnology (Beijing, China). (2022-2023).
• China Anthropology Dissertation Fieldwork Grant for Graduate Studies from School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology (Shenzhen, China). (2022).
• Long-Term (GRAF) Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship.  (Fall 2022 & Spring 2023).
• Department of Anthropology Summer Research Grant. (2021).
• Outstanding Academic Paper Award in 2020 Annual Conference of Society for Visual Anthropology, Association of Chinese Ethnology. Title: “Photography as Participatory Research Strategy: Community Practice of A Photovoice Project on Sex Education for Children in Rural China”. (Nov 2020). 
• Department of Anthropology Summer Research Grant. (2020).
• Graduate Student Organization (GSO) Conference Grant. (2020).
• Boston University Dean’s Fellowship. (Fall 2019, Spring 2020).

Publications

• forthcoming