Dr Xiaoye Zhang

Xiaoye has a disciplinary background in both performance studies and social sciences, more specifically at the crossroads of arts and culture and criminology. Xiaoye has taught undergraduate and postgraduate student in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and the UK. Her main research interest is in ethnographic fieldwork studies in China, where she treats crime and punishment as a slice of China's modernisation problem.

Xiaoye has also worked for an international theatre festival as project coordinator, and as teaching assistant in a special needs young adult college. She facilitates drama workshops within criminal justice settings and gender violence prevention projects. Xiaoye also volunteers in supporting victims of domestic violence. 

Institute for Research in Criminology and Community and Social Justice

Peer-reviewed journals

• ZHANG, X. (2023). ‘Functions of Background Music among Prisoners and Staff in the Chinese Prison Workplace’. Media, Culture & Society. 45(4), 737-752
• ZHANG, X. (2023). ‘Producing exemplarity: Performance making in a Chinese Prison’. Punishment & Society, 25(3), 725-741.
• ZHANG, X. (2021). ‘Participatory Theatre as Fieldwork in Chinese Prisons: A Research Note’. The Prison Journal, 101(6), pp:742-761.
• ZHANG, X. & WANG, L. (2021). ‘Administrative Governance and Front-line Officers in the Chinese Prison System during COVID-19’ Asian Journal of Criminology, 16(1), pp: 91-107.
• ZHANG, X. (2020). ‘Narrative Rehabilitation: Manifestation of Chinese and Western Reform Ideals and Practices’. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 65(4), pp: 373-389.

Book chapters

• ZHANG, X ＆ DONG, X. (2019). ‘Zizhuan: A Meta-narrative of Offender Reform in China’. L, Pressor ＆ S, Sandberg (Eds.) Emerald Handbook of Methods in Narrative Criminology. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, pp:427-444.
• ZHANG, X. (2017). ‘Prison Theatre as Method: Focused Ethnography and Autoethnography in a Chinese Prison’. In Emerging Voices: Critical Social Research by European Group Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers(pp. 298-306). Bristol, UK: European Group Press.

Book reviews

• ZHANG, X. (2020). ‘Review of the book The Chinese Mafia: Organized Crime, Corruption, and Extra-legal Protection’, by P.Wang. Asian Journal of Criminology
• ZHANG, X. (2019). ‘Review of the book Hypocrisy: The Tales and Realities of Drug Detainees in China’, by Vincent Shing Cheng. Asian Journal of Criminology
• ZHANG, X. (2018). ‘Review of the book Chongqing’s Red Culture Campaign: Simulation and Its Social Implications’, by X, MEI. The China Quarterly

Chinese Criminology, sociology of prison and offender rehabilitation, gender and crime

• PhD in Criminology, City University of Hong Kong
• MA in Applied Theatre, Goldsmith, University of London
• BA in English, Nanjing Normal University Taizhou College

Prison, Punishment and Society, Offender Rehabilitation and Desistance, Sociology of Prison

Member of Asian Criminology Society

Conference presentations

• Social Order and Creative Rehabilitation in Chinese Prisons. The first Conference of Legal Anthropology, Shanghai, China, September 2021.
• The Imagination of Prison Ethnography. Department of Anthropology Talk Series at University of Nanjing, Nanjing, China, November 2020
• Narrating Rehabilitation: Prison Leadership and the Exemplary Order. Hong Kong Sociological Association 20th Annual Conference, Hong Kong SAR, December 2018.
• Mobilizing the “Perfect” Legitimacy: Offender Reform as Social Control in Chinese Prison. British Society of Criminology Conference 2018, Birmingham, UK, July 2018.
• Narrative Criminology on the Other Side: Prisoner Autobiography Writing in Mainland China. Narrative Criminology Symposium, Oslo, Norway, June 2017.
• Prisoner’s Large-scale Performance in China: Between “Face-work Project” and Prison Theatre. East Asian Anthropology Conference, Hong Kong SAR, October 2017.
• Performing Confinement: A Pilot Study of Prison Theatre Workshop in an Adult Male Prison in Beijing. Cultural Typhoon, Tokyo, Japan, June 2016.

Consultant for two Chinese prisons on arts and rehabilitation.

Public engagement

• Talk on Yixi (the Chinese version of Ted Talk) titled: “I went to study Ph.D. so that I could go to prison” in September 2020
• Co-founder of Prison Sociology and Anthropology Blog (in Chinese) July 2017 - now
• Founder and co-host of the podcast “Prison Desires” on interdisciplinary collaborations between artists and prison, which is available on Apple Podcast in Chinese. 

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