Bio
Miriam Driessen completed her doctoral studies at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, in 2015. She went on to a role as a visiting research fellow at Peking University before returning to the University of Oxford as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and Jesus College, and subsequently as a postdoctoral associate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
Interests
Miriam Driessen explores local manifestations of China’s global influence.
Drawing on extensive ethnographic field research in Ethiopia and China, Miriam Driessen’s work explores the local manifestations of global transformations brought about by China’s growing international presence. She is interested in migration, labour, gender and sexuality, language, and law.
Driessen’s cross-regional approach highlights interconnections while taking into account social change in both regions. Through detailed, personal accounts of how large-scale infrastructure projects are experienced by migrant workers and local communities, she brings new perspectives to global economic and political processes. Her major publications include Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia and The Restless Earth: Rural China in Transition, runner-up of The Bodley Head, Financial Times Essay Prize 2018. In 2024 she edited a special edition of Global China Pulse: China's Linguistic Frontiers.
Her work contributes to wider discussions on globalisation, migration, and development, showing how large-scale changes are shaped by everyday human encounters.
