Huiran Yi

Research Areas

Biography

Huiran Yi is a PhD candidate in School of Information at the University of Michigan. Her research sits at the intersection of labor, entrepreneurship, future of work, and China studies. Drawing on science and technology studies, critical theory, and feminist ethnography, she dissertation project examines how entrepreneurial labor and diasporic community are reorganized under platform economy, and how diasporic Chinese women navigate the promises and constraints of digital capitalism from the position as the “other” that is both foreign and grassroot. Her dissertation traces new Chinese and feminist subjectivity takes place through the circulation of ideas and imaginaries between the online and offline, between China and the United States, and advances our understanding of the role young women not only in shaping contemporary ideas about Chineseness but also in crafting transnational mobilities amid global geopolitical tensions. Her second line of research concerns work practices and labor in workplaces, including invisible labor in interactions with AI, informal labor in content creation, and moralized entrepreneurial labor. Huiran Yi uses in-depth qualitative methods, including ethnography, interviews, discourse analysis, and user-centered research approach.