Please join us for research presentations by two Fairbank Center Visiting Scholars:

Tommy Tse, Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam
China as data colonizer? Rethinking cultural production, cultural mediation, and consumer agency on Kenyan and Chinese e-commerce platforms

Is China becoming a new “data coloniser” in the Global South? As Chinese digital platforms expand across Africa, debates about infrastructure, power, and data have become increasingly urgent. This talk examines how these dynamics unfold in everyday life through the case of Chinese-invested e-commerce platforms operating in Kenya’s fashion market. Drawing on focus groups and platform walkthrough research, I explore how cultural production, mediation, and consumer practices are shaped by different platform infrastructures and algorithmic logics. Rather than framing Chinese platforms simply as instruments of domination, the talk highlights how users negotiate, adapt, and sometimes resist these systems—revealing more complex forms of cultural exchange and consumer agency within emerging South–South digital economies.

Bowen Sun, Lecturer in the Department of Environmental Design, Shanghai Business School
Manuscript Handbooks of Vernacular Carpenters from Early Twentieth-Century South China

In the field of local document studies, new materials continue to be discovered and organized. By sharing a selection of manuscripts collected from vernacular carpenters in South China, this talk engages in an open-ended discussion of how these materials can be defined, how the knowledge they embody may be interpreted, and how textual practices shape the functioning of vernacular construction knowledge within local social contexts.

Tommy Tse is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and currently a Visiting Fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. His research examines platform economies, digital and creative labour, consumer culture, and global cultural industries. He leads the ERC-funded project China Africa Fashion Power, a five-year ethnographic study of fashion and cultural economies across Asia and Africa. More information: https://www.tommyhltse.com