Lizhen Zhao is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia. Her work examines how encounters among digital technologies, platform capitalism, and existing governance structures in rural China shape and are in turn shaped by rural spatial arrangements, environmental processes, and the lived experiences of local communities.
She is currently developing two research projects. The first investigates how the expansion of e-commerce distribution infrastructures into rural China is transforming local spatial, labor, and creative practices, as well as reconfiguring relationships among platforms, the state, and local actors. The second explores the mutual transformations between platform capitalism and desert ecologies through the case of the Ant Forest Initiative. In addition, she collaborates on projects examining China’s consumer and digital culture, with a focus on promotional and matchmaking livestreaming.
Lizhen’s work has been published in Media, Culture & Society and in edited volumes including Environmental Justice: Beyond the Three-Pillar Paradigm, Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture (2nd Edition), and The Spectacle of Online Life.
She is currently completing her PhD in communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with her dissertation defense scheduled for August 2026. She also holds an MA in media studies from Syracuse University and a BA in communication from Fudan University.
