Andy Cao

Biography

Andy (Jiahe) Cao is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. She holds an M.A. in Anthropology and a Certificate in Education and Society from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in Cultural Studies from SOAS University of London, and a B.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Warwick.

Her research examines contemporary understandings of education in China, with a focus on how marginalized students and educational institutions navigate the tensions between structural constraints and individual agency. Drawing on linguistic anthropology, she investigates how ideologies of success, stigmatization, modernity, and inequality circulate through everyday discourse and digital media, and how young people engage with stigma through practices of mediation, interaction, and identity negotiation both online and offline. At Notre Dame, she intends to continue her ethnographic research on vocational education and social inequality in China. She is a Kellogg Institute Ph.D. Fellow.