Dr Heila Sha

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Biography

Dr. Heila Sha (Saheira Haliel) is a research fellow of Social anthropology. She completed her Ph.D at Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany in July 2015. Her Ph.D research concerns eldercare in Northwest China. Based on her Ph.D dissertation, she published her first book in 2017, titled Care and Aging in Northwest China.

In April 2016, she joined  University of Sussex (UK) as a postdoctoral research fellow.  She is one of the members of ERC-funded project entitled “Yiwu: Trust, Global Traders and Commodities in a Chinese International City” (TRODITIES). She has carried out long-term fieldwork in Zhejiang province of China from 2016-2017. Her main research focus includes transnational marriages between Chinese women and foreign traders in Yiwu; interactions between foreign traders and Chinese women in import and export trading companies and restaurants in Yiwu. 

Role

I am one of the members of an ERC-funded project entitled “Yiwu: Trust, Global Traders and Commodities in a Chinese International City” (TRODITIES). This is an interdisciplinary research project, concerning transnational trading activities involving Chinese-made commodities, and how such activities facilitate flows of goods as well as ideas, knowledge and people. My role in this project is to look at the interactions between local and incoming Chinese citizens and international traders across the domains of business practice, marriage, friendship, sexuality, and cultural life more generally.