My name is Zheng Ying. I am a Ph.D. researcher at the Gender Studies program of Utrecht University. My project is ‘Performing History: Historical Costume, Gender and Popular Culture in Contemporary China‘. The project is supervised by prof. dr. Berteke Waaldijk. My research mainly focuses on the popularity of Han-Chinese historical costume (han fu), among young urban Chinese women. In my project, I will explore how women experience the past by wearing historical costumes and various forms of historical re-enactment performances. Also, how do these activities become a vehicle of multilayered subjectivity and identity among women? An interdisciplinary methodology with the theories from semiotics, history, psychoanalysis, and ethnography is used in this project.
I’ve graduated from the research master’s program Gender and Ethnicity at Utrecht University. Before coming to The Netherlands, I also studied in the field of journalism and communication.
