Staff profile

I am a sociocultural anthropologist specialises in the study of environment, health, activism, and self-development in East Asia. My first project is an ethnographic study of green living and its implications for individuals, society, and activism in postcolonial Hong Kong.

Building on my interest in environmental activism in East Asia, my second research, funded by the ERC project titled 'Toxic Expertise: Environmental Justice and the Global Petrochemical Industry', focuses on the ways mainland Chinese people negotiate and make sense of toxic pollution, their perceptions of (environmental) injustice, and how they cope with contrived ignorance.

My most recent research is concerned with various modalities of healing, whether that pertains to the self, society, or the Earth. I am particularly interested in therapeutic interventions, coaching, and self-help in non-clinical settings. Through exploring these modalities, I aim to first identify what healing is and how we heal in today's world. Secondly, I seek to understand the interconnection between self-transformation and social transformation, and the implications of healing for both personal well-being and social justice.

Underpinning all of my research are questions that revolve around the interplay between individual and the social, agency and freedom; acceptance and resistance; dependency and in(ter)dependency, and the production of knowledge and ignorance in the most mundane areas in people’s everyday life.

Prior to Durham, I was Assistant Professor at the University of Macau and held Postdoctoral and Visiting Fellowships at Warwick, Oxford, and the LSE. I am also a Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany.

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students working in the intersection of social, environmental, and medical anthropology; and from authors interested in the journal and the book series that I edit. 

My latest publications can be found here.

• Environment and sustainability
• Health & wellbeing
• Planetary health
• Green politics and philosophy
• Social movements
• Therapy and healing
• Buddhism
• Relatedness and (inter)dependence
• Agency and freedom
• Production of knowledge and ignorance
• East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan)

• 2023: Landhaus Fellow & Society of Fellows, Rachel Carson Center, LMU München, Germany:
• 2023: Consultant Expert at LSE Consulting:
• 2022: Co-editor-in-chief of Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies:
• 2019: Visiting Fellow, LSE:
• 2018: Lay Examiner (MRCOG Part 3), Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists:
• 2017: Co-editor of Toxic News:
• 2016: Editor in Asian Studies, Amsterdam University Press:

Book review

• Lou, L. I. T. (2018). Review of Transforming Patriarchy: Chinese Families in the Twenty-First Century Edited by Gonçalo Santos and Stevan Harrell. Seattle, WA, and London: University of Washington Press, 2016. China Quarterly, 233, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305741018000292
• Lou, L. I. (2014). Review of "Green Politics in China: Environmental Governance and State–Society Relations", by Joy Y. Zhang and Michael Barr. London: Pluto Press, 2013. The China journal (Canberra, A.C.T. Online), 72, https://doi.org/10.1086/677088

Chapter in book

• Lou, L. I. (2023). Preservation by Demolition: Toxic Heritage in Contemporary China. In E. Kryder-Reid, & S. May (Eds.), Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice (174-198). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003365259-20
• Lou, L. I. (2022). From Hygienic Modernity to Green Modernity: Two Modes of Modern Living in Hong Kong Since the 1970s. In Y. Lee, & M. Rajguru (Eds.), Design and Modernity in Asia: National Identity And Transnational Exchange 1945–1990 (105-120). Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350091498.ch-6

Journal Article

• Lou, L. I. T. (2023). Healing Nature: Spiritual Ecology, Self-Cultivation, and Social Transformation in Hong Kong. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1163/15685357-02703004
• Lou, L. I. T. (2022). The art of unnoticing: Risk perception and contrived ignorance in China. American Ethnologist, 49(4), 580-594. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13099
• Lou, L. (2021). Casino capitalism in the era of COVID-19: examining Macau’s pandemic response. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, 17(2), https://doi.org/10.1108/stics-09-2020-0025
• Fabian, N., & Lou, L. I. T. (2019). The Struggle for Sustainable Waste Management in Hong Kong: 1950s–2010s. Worldwide Waste, 2(1), https://doi.org/10.5334/wwwj.40
• Graeber, D., & Lou, L. I. T. (2019). Bullshit Jobs: A Conversation with David Graeber. Made in China (Canberra, A.C.T. Online), 4(2), https://doi.org/10.22459/mic.04.02.2019.19
• Lou, L. I. T. (2019). Freedom as ethical practices: on the possibility of freedom through freeganism and freecycling in Hong Kong. Asian Anthropology, 18(4), https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478x.2019.1633728
• Lou, L. I. T. (2017). In the Absence of a Peasantry, What, Then, Is a Hong Kong Farmer?. Made in China (Canberra, A.C.T. Online), 2(4), https://doi.org/10.22459/mic.02.04.2017.10
• Lou, L. I. T. (2017). The Material Culture of Green Living in Hong Kong. Anthropology Now, 9(1), https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2017.1291055