Hanyang Zhou, an undergraduate student from DKU’s Class of 2026, stands out for her academic achievements and research contributions. Majoring in Computation & Design with a focus on Social Policy, Hanyang has been actively involved in various student research projects under the CSCC. As a student member of the Governing China Cluster and a research assistant to Prof. Fangsheng Zhu, she has explored critical issues such as educational inequality and the impacts of China’s Double Reduction Policy. Currently, Hanyang is leading a CSCC student-initiated research project titled “The ‘Invisible’ Female Riders in China’s Food Delivery: Exploring the Impact of Platform Algorithms on Female Workers in the Gig Economy.” Additionally, she co-presides over the DKU Youngsters Charity Club, advocating for rural education in China. Her multifaceted engagement in academic, research, and extracurricular activities marks her as an exemplary student and emerging scholar at DKU.
Hi Hanyang, can you tell us about your background and what inspired you to choose Computation & Design with a focus on Social Policy as your major?
Thank you for asking this question and there is a complex story behind it. At the beginning of DKU, I was already drawn to the Computation & Design major with a public policy track, as it perfectly blended my interests in programming and social issues.
Through the trials and exploration deepening into concrete topics, I realized that the quantitative and computational approaches alone did not align with my interest in studying society and its people. This reflective process brought me to cultural anthropology, a field I immediately connected with. Together with Sociology, they introduced me to ways of interpreting the interactions between people and the world, and between me and the people. Meanwhile, I recognized that beyond the methodology is the question of how to interact with the world and people – which I do not think is disciplinary-determined but an ultimate theme to always reflect on as a social science learner.
After gaining these new insights which further deepened my curiosity about the interactions between technology and society, I declared my major in Computation & Design. The major courses offer me the chance to attain more concrete knowledge about the subjects shaping society, such as algorithms, large language models, and deep learning. Parallelly, opportunities to take courses beyond my major, attend lectures, and engage in research opportunities inspired by DKU platforms such as CSCC, allow me to continue practicing and improving my knowledge in Anthropology and Sociology. Overall, I view myself more as a sociology and anthropology student, and also plan to focus more on these areas in my future academic path.
You have been involved in several research projects under the CSCC. What motivated you to focus on topics such as educational inequality and the impacts of China’s Double Reduction Policy?
My interest in education and inequality comes from my embodied observations. Involving in surrounding communities, I often thought about how the structural environment reshapes a group of students’ educational experience and impacts their future trajectories. Since DKU, I have been actively engaged in many voluntary educational projects in different places. Those experiences brought me away from the study desk while immersing myself in different worlds, which further deepened my passion for studying education-related issues.
It’s my fortune that Prof. Fangsheng Zhu offered me the research opportunity, introducing me to the complexity of education. The research allows me to delve into different structural logics – such as policy, capital, and technology, and how they are involved in education ecology. Importantly, those insights complemented my previous observations and raised more puzzles for me. Though I cannot answer many questions now, I continue to engage in education-related topics while broadening the scope to labor topics to understand education in a dynamic time series.
Your current project explores the ‘invisible’ female riders in China’s food delivery sector. Can you share what initially drew your attention to this topic and what the primary goals of your research are as well as any updates on the project?
This independent research project is inspired by my observations in a course project on China’s food delivery riders. While reviewing literature and conducting on-site interviews, I noticed the invisibility of female riders – they were rarely mentioned in academic studies or excluded from the existing findings. This led me to further question the experiences of particular female riders and how platform infrastructure might produce gender disparities. Driven by these questions, I initiated the project with another student Yixin Gu, who is also interested in gender-related topics, under the guidance of Prof. Fan Liang.
Our primary goal is to uncover the work and life experiences of the female riders, how the digital platforms impacted gender practice, and how they perceive their identities. As for the current stage, we have completed the first round of the literature review and actively engaged with various qualitative research methods, including participatory and online community observations as well as in-depth interviews. By the end of June, we had engaged with around 12 female riders, and I also experientially acted as a real female food delivery rider to collect first-hand insights. The project’s expansion over the summer brought new team members from disciplines such as media, feminist studies, and communications, enriching our work with diverse humanistic perspectives. We plan to complete data collection by the end of summer and proceed to analysis.
As the project goes deeper, I resonate that it is more than an academic pursuit; it’s an important personal journey for me. Engaging closely with my participants – who I often call “sisters” (a jie) – transcended the research topic. They challenged the well-discussed methods, expanded existing views of society, and led me to question my own identity.
What has been the most surprising or insightful finding from your research on female delivery riders, and how do you hope your work will contribute to the broader understanding of gender issues in the digital economy?
Our data analysis on female delivery riders has not quite started yet; therefore. we could not draw definitive conclusions. However, we did identify some interesting patterns through our rigorous fieldwork. For instance, there tend to be different logic of interactions that are gendered within the digital workplace. We have noticed that algorithms are not the only factors creating gender disparities; they interplay with the work environment, societal norms in virtual spaces, and their individual but also similar life trajectories. I am delighted and proud that our theoretical framework emerged organically from hands-on findings, rather than forcing observations into a pre-existing framework. Meanwhile, our research highlights the evolving and dynamic roles of working-class women, in the expansive process from the virtual to the digital realm. It further reveals how the digital space is both reshaping and perpetuating the gendered relationship and invisible gap.
As a student leader and co-president of the DKU Youngsters Charity Club, how do you balance your academic, research, and extracurricular commitments?
I find different projects of mine are tightly rooted in and continuously motivated by my inner passion. Therefore, the commitments do not present as burdens but as a self-motivated mission through a reflective learning process. Academics, research, and extracurriculars are not isolated. Instead, they appear to be pieces of a larger puzzle that complement each other. They allow me to understand textbook knowledge through my hands-on experience, or apply scholarly findings to real-world practices. They are truly precious to me. However, I have to admit that this experience was tough since it took a trade-off for personal life and time for more in-depth thinking. Therefore, I may engage more with my research study at the current stage, since many deeper and broader topics unfold in the research process that requires me to study.
Looking forward, what are your aspirations for future research or career plans, and how do you hope to continue making an impact in the field of social policy and digital labor?
My research interest lies in power dynamics and rights, with a concentration on unvoiced groups. Moreover, I am also curious about how emerging medians such as platforms and technology intersect with the dynamics. Education-related topics are still what I care the most about; however, I decided to delve deeper into topics such as labor and power for now. Therefore, after understanding how education engages with a student’s extended life trajectory, I may identify my perspectives for evaluating education – with their echoes from the future.
As for the tension between research and practice, I view my future approaches as not merely extracting knowledge from participants, but as a co-constructed process that empowers each other. Crossing the boundary – is my philosophy concluded from research and applied in practice.
