Christina Kefala
Research Field: Creative Industries & Entrepreneurship, Design, Aesthetics, Branding, AI Imaginaries, Transnational Labor, Media and Digital Cultures
Christina Kefala is an anthropologist and digital ethnographer whose work explores the intersections of creative industries and entrepreneurship, design and aesthetics, branding, AI imaginaries, transnational labor, media and digital cultures.
She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam, where her doctoral research was part of the European Research Council (ERC)– anthropological funded project China-White. During her PhD, she spent a year as a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Center for Chinese Studies. Christina also earned an MA in Sociology from Fudan University in Shanghai, supported by a Chinese Government Scholarship, and a BA in Social Anthropology from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens.
Her research is grounded in fieldwork conducted across diverse sites worldwide, including Europe, China, and the United States. Working across these contexts has allowed her to develop an interdisciplinary approach bridging anthropology, cultural studies, and media theory. She examines how digital identities are constructed and mobilized in virtual communities, while also engaging with the material, aesthetic, and entrepreneurial dimensions of creative labor in China’s cultural industries.
Christina has published widely in peer-reviewed journals on migration, media, and Asian studies. She is also committed to public anthropology: as an editorial intern for the American Ethnological Society, she authored and curated collections that connected scholarship to contemporary debates. She has further contributed essays to SAPIENS, Sixth Tone, and the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS). Currently, Christina is developing projects on AI imaginaries in China, neo-Chinese aesthetics in fashion, art, and performance, and creative entrepreneurship.