Zexuan/Franky He

Profile

I am a PhD researcher in Sociology at the University of Leeds. My research broadly examines intimacy, marriage, gender and digital culture in contemporary China, with a particular interest in how social, economic and technological transformations reshape young people's intimate lives and relationship-making practices.

My doctoral research focuses on the changing landscape of marriage-seeking among young adults in China. It examines how individuals navigate multiple matchmaking channels, including dating apps, commercial matchmaking services, family and interpersonal networks, social media, and matchmaking activities organised or supported by local governments and social organisations. Through this research, I explore how people negotiate expectations surrounding marriage, gender, class, family and personal autonomy across different social settings.

My work draws primarily on qualitative and mixed-method approaches, including interviews, questionnaires, digital ethnography and textual analysis. More broadly, I am interested in bringing sociological and anthropological perspectives together to understand how intimate decisions are shaped by wider institutional, cultural and technological environments.

Research interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of the sociology of intimacy, gender, digital sociology and contemporary Chinese society. I am particularly interested in how intimate relationships that appear highly personal are organised through wider social institutions, cultural expectations, market forces and technological infrastructures.

My current research investigates marriage-seeking as a multi-channel social practice. Rather than treating dating apps, matchmaking agencies, family introductions or state-supported matchmaking activities as separate phenomena, I examine how individuals move between and strategically combine different channels. This allows me to explore how different matchmaking environments produce distinctive norms, hierarchies, risks and understandings of suitable partners.

A related strand of my research concerns the relationship between intimacy and social inequality. I am interested in how gender expectations, socioeconomic resources, education, occupation and different forms of social and cultural capital affect people's positions within contemporary marriage markets. I also examine how uncertainty, emotional risk and anxieties around marriage are experienced and managed by young adults.

More broadly, my research considers how digital platforms, commercial actors, families and public institutions increasingly participate in organising intimate life, and what these developments reveal about broader transformations in Chinese society.

Qualifications

• MSc in Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh
• BA in Chinese Language and Literature, Nanjing Forestry University