Prof. Orna Naftali

Abraham Miller Chair in Chinese Studies, Associate Professor, Head of the China Program at the Department of Asian Studies.

Trained as a cultural anthropologist, my research engages both with contemproary issues as well as the social and cultural history of the PRC, with a particular focus on childhood, youth, education and the family; gender and sexuality; science and subjectivity; citizenship and legal consciousness; national identity and militarization in post-1949 China.

My work has been published in journals such as Childhood; Journal of Youth Studies; Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth; The China Quarterly; The China Journal; Modern China; China Information; Journal of Contemporary China, Oriens Extremus, Nan Nü, and Journal of Current Chinese Affairs.

I am the author of Children, Rights, and Modernity in China: Raising Self-Governing Citizens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Children in China (Polity, 2016). My recent book, Mobilising China's One-Child Generation: Education, Nationalism, and Youth Militarisation in the PRC (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), draws on the results of qualitative fieldwork and the analysis of Chinese government, media, and educational materials to explore the interface between education, militarization, and the construction of class and gender identities among youth in contemporary China. My current research explores youth legal awareness in China, as well as gender education, and children and the environment in the PRC.  

At the Department of Asian Studies, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on culture and society, gender and sexuality, family and education, and media and consumption in modern and contemporary China.

I am happy to supervise MA and doctoral students interested in the anthropology of contemporary China; childhood and youth culture in the PRC (1949 to present); popular nationalism and militarization; gender and sexuality; environmental education, and children's rights and legal consciousness in China.

Current and past MA and PhD students have worked on a variety of topics, including: Ethnicity, language, and class subjectivities of youths of Taiwan–Southeast Asia mixed families; Gender, morality, and cultural citizenship in overseas Chinese labor migration; Non-Invasive therapy: The forces shaping the practice of psychology in urban China; Narratives of the May 4th Movement in China's local museums; Gender and ethnic identification among ethnic Korean girls in the PRC; Production and consumption of 'commodified intimacy' in Chinese live idol fandom; Anti-Sexual harassment laws and policies in China: Conflicting perspectives of state and society; and Hashtag Parachute: How Chinese ‘parachute kids’ negotiate their identities and social relationships on digital platforms.