Post-socialist transformations and social change; development studies; youth studies; immigration studies.

Central Asia (Uzbekistan), China

Huajing Yang is a social anthropologist specializing in transnational mobility. She obtained her doctorate in Social Anthropology from ISEK at the University of Zurich, where her dissertation examined the transnational life-making of highly educated Uzbeks in Berlin, conceptualizing Uzbek migration from the 2020s as a translocal process of negotiating attachment, identity, and aspirations across places, time, and generations in terms of dynamic mobility shapes. During her doctoral studies, she contributed to the EU H2020 MSCA-RISE project “Central Asian Law” (2023), focusing on foreign investment localization in Uzbekistan; co-organized the symposium “Navigating and Contesting Borders” within the EU MSCA project “MARS” (2024); and co-initiated and managed a U21-funded virtual writing collective for doctoral researchers worldwide (2020–2021). She was also a visiting researcher at the Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science (2023–2024).

Prior to her Ph.D., she earned an M.A. in religious studies from Mahidol University, where her thesis explored the implication of Islam for the Chinese BRI in Uzbekistan. She subsequently served as head of training affairs and public relations at Mahidol University’s Center for China and Globalizing Asian Studies (CCGAS). Her B.A. was in media and communication studies from China and she had seven years of industry experience in the mass media field as a producer.