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Welcome! I'm Jing Wang. It is written as 王菁 in Chinese. The given name jīng 菁 conveys my mom's best wishes: knowing the essence of things and growing like wild grass in this wild world. Hope our paths cross soon!

About

As an anthropologist by training and interdisciplinary scholar by choice, I am currently working as the Senior Research Manager at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC), Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, with an affiliation at the Center of the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC). In the fall of 2023, I will be joining as an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

My research and public engagements have been mainly driven by two questions: How do socially disadvantaged communities make their own voices heard? What are the limits and potentialities of global media cultures in shaping the lives and histories of these communities? Driven by these questions, my research interests include: Anthropology of Islam and Muslim Societies; Global Media and Communication; Sound and Podcast Studies; Gender, Race & Ethnicity; Mobility, Diaspora & Memory; Translation Practices and Theories; China, Central Asia, East Asia, Asian American communities; Critical Pedagogy; Multimodal Ethnography; Public Scholarship.

Currently, I am working on a book manuscript examining the history of Islamophobia in China and media practices of Sinophone Muslims to construct alternative narratives amidst the growing anti-Muslim sentiments. I have published in peer-reviewed journals such as New Media and Society, Made In China Journal, Asian Anthropology, Journal of Contemporary East Asia, Terrain: Anthropologie & Sciences Humaines, and Journal of Transformative Learning. A book chapter “Affective Matrivocality and Women’s Voices: A History of Muslim Women Writers in China” is forthcoming in Brill, as part of a series of book projects initiated by the World Muslim Communities.

Meanwhile, I am a translator, podcaster, curator, and "knotter." In 2015, I joined CNPolitics 政见 and initiated its podcast projects. In 2020, I co-founded TyingKnots 结绳志, an independent, non-profit, volunteer-based group committed to breaking down walls between academia, media, and the public through translation projects and the promotion of public-facing scholarship. Since 2022, I have been co-editing and producing the Global Media & Communication podcast series as part of the multimodal project powered by CARGC. My commentaries and essays also feature in academic and public media outlets such as Anthropology News, Today's Totalitarianism, Asian Review of Books, Initium, Inkstone, CNpolitics, Oriental History Review, among others.