Dr. Willy Sier

Dr. Willy Sier is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University’s Department of Anthropology. Her research focuses on questions of mobility and identity and informs her teaching in the course Nationalism & Racialization in the Anthropology bachelor program.

Thus far, she has conducted most of her research in China where she studied rural-urban, gender, and family relations in the country’s rapidly urbanizing and increasingly diverse society. With an approach that analyses the personal as the political, she produces both written and visual output that reflects on China’s social transformation. Willy conducted both her PhD (2020) and postdoctoral research at the University of Amsterdam and has also spent time in Oxford and Paris (INALCO).

How do rapid processes of socioeconomic change drive the reconfiguration of ideas about gender, family, self, and other in Chinese society?

As an UYA-member I’d like to focus on making the academic community more open and accessible and improving the relationship between science and society.

Willy Sier has been a member of the Utrecht Young Academy, a bridge between young and talented researchers, since 2023.