Stella is a PhD student at USC Annenberg. Her general research interests include media infrastructure, ICT, migration, and racial discourse in China. She’s also interested in theories of mediation, postcolonialism, neoliberalism, and Marxism. She likes to think in oppositions or contradictions and explores the tensions between the local and the global, the material and the immaterial. Her previous project looks at the postfeminist media cultures of Asian beauty vlogs on YouTube and explores how the ethos of empowerment and the production of subjects in these videos echo the logic of neoliberal capitalism.

Before USC, Stella earned her BS in Media, Culture, and Communication with honors at New York University. She also had work experiences in multicultural advertising, music industry, and non-profits in the U.S. and China. When she’s not doing academic stuff, you can find her in indie cinemas, climbing gyms, or local zine fairs.