Helen F. Siu is a professor of anthropology and former chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. She has conducted decades of fieldwork in Southern China, exploring agrarian change and the nature of the socialist state. Lately, she has explored rural-urban interface in China, inter-Asian connections, popular music, and the new political space in Hong Kong. She is the founding director of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, which highlights cross-disciplinary research and global collaborations. Her recent publications are Asia Inside Out (three co-edited volumes: Harvard, 2015/2019), Tracing China: A Forty-Year Ethnographic Journey (Hong Kong University Press, 2016), and “China-Africa Encounters: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Realities,” (co-author) in the Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (November 2017).
Professor of Anthropology
Yale University

Meet Helen F. Siu
A short portrait filmed at the Hans Arnhold Center, introducing the work and ideas behind fellows’ projects in Berlin.
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China Africa Encounters: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Realities
Helen Siu explores the crucial layers of maritime historical connections across Asia and how these encounters are expressed in everyday life among stakeholders who have traversed the continental divides.
28 Oct 2021
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