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

Uzbekistan, Central Asia

Huajing Yang is a Ph.D. candidate of Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (ISEK) at the University of Zurich since 2019. After obtained her B.A. degree in media and communication from China and seven years of experience in the mass media field, she continued her Master studies in religious studies from Mahidol University in Thailand. Afterwards, she served as the head of training affairs & public relations, Center for Chinese Studies (now renamed Center for China and Globalizing Asian Studies) of Mahidol University.

Her MA thesis examined the practice of secularized Islam in Uzbekistan in response to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). She is now working her Ph.D. dissertation on Uzbek communities in Germany and social transformation in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan in terms of perspectives of changing aspirations of young Uzbeks and stratified mobilities of migration. She is involved in the project of “Central Asian Law: Legal Cultures and Business Environments in Central Asia” funded by the European Commission’s H2020 MSCA-RISE programme (project number 870647) with focus on the business implementation and locality of foreign investments in Uzbekistan.