My path to Chinese Studies began in the sixth form, when friends at the music school I attended in Somerset gave me my first taste of the joys of speaking a few phrases of (mostly very rude) Cantonese and communicating in a language wonderfully unlike the European languages I had studied up until then. I went on to graduate with a BA in Chinese Studies from the University of Cambridge (Trinity Hall), then spent two years in China studying first at the Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University and then towards an MA in contemporary Chinese literature at Peking University. In 2008 I received my PhD in modern Chinese literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the University of London, writing my dissertation on literary and sociological developments in the mainland Chinese avant-garde poetry scene of the early twenty-first century.
My first academic position was as an Assistant Professor of modern Chinese cultural studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University, where I taught from 2008 to 2013. After five years in the United States, I came back to the UK to work as a Lecturer in Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester, before returning to Cambridge to take up my current position in 2016. In addition to my academic work, I have written Chinese-language columns for newspapers, websites (e.g. BBC China) and magazines in the UK and China, done translating and interpreting work for ABC Sports, MTV China and other organisations and dabbled in Chinese-language blogging and song writing.
Dr Inwood teaches undergraduate courses on modern Chinese literature and film. This ties in closely with her research into contemporary Chinese culture.
Dr Inwood is happy to supervise students in topics relating to her research on modern and contemporary Chinese literature, culture and media.
As related to mainland China, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan: contemporary literature, especially poetry and genre fiction; popular, fan and folk cultures; internet culture and society; media studies theories; sociology of literature and culture.
My research thus far has focused on interactions between media and culture in contemporary China, especially the ways in which twenty-first century digital media practices are shaping the production, circulation and reception of literature and culture. My first book, Verse Going Viral: China’s New Media Scenes (University of Washington Press, 2014), examines the interactions between poetry scene participants, the media, businesses and members of the non-poetry-reading public in the production and evaluation of contemporary Chinese poetry. A taste of my arguments in this book can be found on the University of Washington Press blog and in an interview with the China Digital Times (see links above). Supported by a British Academy Small Grant, I am currently working on my second monograph, tentatively entitled Netfic: China's Other World Literature, and am also working on articles on topics related to Chinese genre fiction, online science fiction and popular disaster narratives in Hong Kong.
Current PhD students
| Qingyang Bai: Flowers in the Crevice: Misty Poetry, Literary History Writing, and the Emotional Individual in 1970s’ and 1980s’ China |
| Monica F He: The censored transmedia storytelling of queer narratives in contemporary China |
| Ruo Fan (Claire) Ping: Gendering the Dongbei “storm”: region and masculinities in contemporary Chinese culture |
| Bingbing Shi: Repeating and Recreating History: Adaptations of Literature in Contemporary Chinese Cinema |
| Veronica (Jingyi) Wang: Coming from the People? Renegotiating the ‘Folk’ in 21st Century Chinese Urban Culture: case studies on 'folk' song, poetry and online short videos." |
| Zhenyu Xu: A Brand-New Panther: The Animality of Modern Chinese Poetry |