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. My research explores the role of culture in three inter-related areas to foster socio-ecological well-being. First, I examine how culture shapes climate communication and practices, identifying how people in diverse communities think, feel, and act in regards to global climate adaptation. Second, I investigate how culture shapes human-nature relations, contrasting dualistic and ecological cultural models that shape current efforts to build a sustainable future. Third, I study how culture shapes technological innovation—particularly what people want from AI—and how the use of AI shifts culture in organizational contexts.

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, cultural product analysis, fabulation, and participatory action frameworks. Throughout my work, I approach “culture” as historically derived meaning frameworks and their enactments in individual psyches, interpersonal interactions, social practices, artifacts, and institutions. My research aims to build and apply a science of meaning for deeply understanding ourselves through culture and for cultivating shared agency across differences to tackle planetary challenges. I believe the presence and possibilities of the “other” is of a gifted nature, not to be feared, denied, or controlled, but to be in creative and enriching relations with.

My ongoing research is supported by the Sustainability Accelerator at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. I seek partnerships with nonprofits, policymakers, and community members to forge a culture-behavior-policy-design interface for deeper integration between behavioral research and climate action. Learn more about this initiative here.

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: shared agency for climate action, cultural models of human-nature relations, culture and smart technologies, socio-ecological wellbeing

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.