I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, working with Professors Hazel Rose Markus and Jeanne L. Tsai. As a behavioral scientist and cultural scholar, I am broadly interested in how culture influences our ability to live in just and caring relations—with one another and with the natural worlds. I investigate cultural foundations of a sustainable future across three domains: climate adaptation, human-nature relationships, and sustainable workplaces.

Methodologically, I pursue a mode of inquiry that is both empirical and imaginative, elevating overlooked experiences, practices, and knowledge to foster possibilities of care and justice. I integrate surveys and experiments, media analysis, fabulation, computational methods, and participatory action frameworks. My research aims to build and apply a science of meaning for deeply understanding ourselves and for cultivating shared agency across differences to tackle planetary challenges.

My ongoing research is supported by the Sustainability Accelerator at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. I am leading an interdisciplinary research project focused on culturally resonant socio-ecological actions that enable people to live safely with wildfires.

I was born in a lovely small city with a lot of rivers and lakes in Jiangsu Province, China. I later came to the U.S. for graduate school. I received my Ph.D. from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where I was lucky to be advised by Professor Brian S. Lowery. Outside research, I also make poems, songs, and dance pieces usually together with my ukulele.

Research interests: culturally resonant sustainability and climate action, behavioral change, cultural models of human-nature relations, organizational culture and future of work

August 2025
I will organize a roundtable session on identifying cultural defaults for global climate adaptation at Association for Psychological Science Global Summit in October, 2025.

August 2025
My project on identifying cultural defaults for global climate adaptation will be presented at Stanford Policy Day Conference in November, 2025.