Yu Ching Cheng

Yu Ching Cheng studies boundaries as value-based judgements and examines their role as meaning-making processes, their origins, mechanisms, and social consequences on both institutional and global levels. 

Her research and teaching interests are at the intersection of organization theory, cultural sociology, economic sociology, and science and technology. With an interdisciplinary approach and mixed methods, her main research focuses on trading boundary in financial market and uses text analysis to analyze how mediated evaluations of pre-clinical medical innovation reproduce information asymmetry in IPO market.

Another project uses ethnography and in-depth interviews to analyze marital asymmetry of Chinese-speaking immigrants and how they draw marital boundaries along national, racial/ethnic, class, and gender lines.

She holds a PhD in sociology from University at Albany, SUNY. Currently, she is International Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. You can reach her at yujuliacheng@gmail.com.

Current Work:

Yu Ching Cheng will be completing a book-length manuscript (working title: Mobility and Marital Boundary-Making: Chinese Student Migrants in Urban Japan) with Dr. Yoshimichi Sato at Tohoku University. This book, which is based on her dissertation research, will be the first mixed-method analysis of the mobility patterns and marital preferences of Chinese students-turned-immigrants within the context of intra-Asian migration. Their long-term research goal is to compare aspects of student migration in Asia, Europe, and North America to capture the dynamics of international student mobility in an era of identity uncertainties. 

Research Area Keyword(s):

International migration; culture; family; race/class/gender; economic sociology