Xie Xiaoyu is a Visiting Student at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing from October 2026 to March 2027. She is currently a PhD student in Anthropology at Zhejiang University, China.

Her research interests include kinship, family care and moral anthropology. Her doctoral research draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a rural community in Zhejiang Province, China. Following land expropriation, local residents experienced a government-led housing relocation initiative aimed at improving their living conditions. Her research examines how housing relocation and changes in material living conditions intersect with practices of household division, the allocation of family resources and intergenerational relations. In particular, she explores how family members negotiate the distribution of resources and responsibilities, and how these negotiations shape family relationships and care for older people. She is also interested in care ethics and chronic illness care.

During her visit to Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, she hopes to draw on discussions in ageing studies, moral anthropology and care ethics to further explore the practices and meanings of eldercare in rural Chinese families today. In particular, she is interested in how state involvement in old-age support reshapes care responsibilities and the relationships between different care providers, how greater emphasis on older people’s self-management and preventive responsibility is emerging, and how these developments intersect with changing intergenerational relations and obligations in rural Chinese families..