ZHANG Jinjin (Kimie) (PhD candidate, Department of Japanese Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong; HYI Science, Technology, and Society in Asia Training Program Visiting Fellow, 2025-26)
“Animating Relationality: Digital Life-making in Depopulating Japan”
What got you interested in your research topic?
My interest in this research topic was sparked when the pandemic swept across the world and people were suddenly (often involuntarily) thrust into living online. Confined to my rented shared apartment in Hong Kong, I began video-calling my mother in Guangzhou every day as a routine check-in. Meanwhile, I was involved in applied research projects that brought retired people into university and middle school classrooms, or taught them how to use digital applications like Zoom. My interest in and concerns about digital practices grew as I lived my everyday life connected to people, many of whom were far away. I began wanting to understand questions like: To what extent do digital technologies bind us or break us? How do we live with technology when it seems to offer both freedom and constraint? To what extent do digital technologies themselves possess agency? I came to realize that technology use is deeply context-dependent, and that it is crucial to highlight the nuances of when, where, and with whom people have (or lack) agency.
During my fieldwork in depopulating communities in rural Japan, I was fascinated by how new technologies like Web3 were adapted into local contexts to create what some call a “relational population” to attract funding and human labor. I was also surprised by the embodied, material aspects people emphasized in their digital lives. This case helped me understand in what sense technological innovation does (not) necessarily matter, and how people’s desires are not always oriented toward the abstract or intangible. On a broader level, I am also attentive to the structural forces of digital transformation, such as the role of the state, expert opinions, public-private partnerships, and geopolitics, that shape how people seek intimacy, justice, and belonging. Digital anthropology and science and technology studies have provided me with the intellectual tools to explore these under-examined yet fascinating dynamics of human and non-human interaction.
Outside of work, where can we find you?
My favorite spot is the Charles River, though I imagine that’s a popular answer! I love walking or running along the riverbank, taking in the vast, open sky at dawn or the fiery glow of sunset, sometimes tinted with a soft pink. Birds are often singing, and squirrels and gray rabbits make their appearances in turn. On warmer days, you can watch rowing teams training on the water. In late autumn, Canada geese gather for their collective bath, and in winter, the river turns into a vast, snowy stillness, frozen over and hushed, the air crisp and fresh. I find calm and peace beside the river, feeling its steady flow. It reminds me of the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s book Primeval and Other Times, where nature holds deep narrative presence.
Over winter break, I started a local walking project: setting out on foot from campus to measure the land within a five-kilometer radius. I walked north to Tufts, south to Brookline, west to Watertown, and east into downtown Boston, documenting my thoughts and impressions through photos and notes. I realized that my current rhythm is very different from my lifestyle last year, when I was living nomadically and quite unstably, traveling across cities and countries largely for research. But I took to this lower scale of movement as it keeps me refreshed, alive, and moving forward!
What would you want to do most as a career if you were not in academia?
I would hope to become both a counsellor and a recorder of history. At its heart, the work is not so different from that of an ethnographer: listening deeply and preserving stories. In this way, I can support others, whether intellectually or emotionally, and feel most fully myself in giving tangible forms to meaningful time. I would also love to run a small “third place,” perhaps a blend of bookstore and café, where people could come and go freely, finding a little room to rest when they need it.
Read Jinjin’s bio on our website!