hi — i'm lucy. an anthropologist of trust, arriving by way of law and economics.
I'm finishing an MA in Social-Cultural Anthropology at Columbia, where my thesis looks at how people come to trust — and grow attached to — the AI systems they talk to.
Before New York I read law at Zhejiang University, took a Master of Law and Economics at Guanghua Law School, and spent short terms at Oxford and Berkeley. I've worked on Hong Kong IPOs, on data legislation for a municipal government, and on user research for a consultancy in Shanghai.
Running underneath all of it is theatre. I spent years backstage as an assistant director, script translator, and costume designer, and years in moot court arguing international law in English. Both taught me the same thing: an argument is not finished until someone in the room decides to go along with it.
Off the page — backstage theatre creation and urban photography.
writingacademic writing, legal research and drafting, English–Chinese translation
languagesChinese (native) · English (TOEFL 110)
02
( research )
ethnographic and mixed-methods work on trust and attachment in human–ai relationships.
( 2 )
An ethnographic study of how affective trust is built and sustained between people and the AI systems they talk to, based on interviews with young Chinese-speaking adults.
A mixed-methods study of how young people across cultural contexts take up tools like ChatGPT — 200+ participants, 20+ in-depth interviews, and interaction-log analysis in Python and R.
Findings are set out in a 20,000-word report.
mixed methodspythonrcross-cultural research
03
( marketing & legal )
applied work where the audience is a client, a regulator, or a market — and the argument still has to survive contact with real users.
( 3 )
Led user-trend research on the US and Mexico beauty markets, tracing how regional culture shapes aesthetic preference and purchase decisions. Combined industry reports with social trend data to produce three regional reports supporting a client's international expansion.
Owned core user analysis for the AI diary app Shuji: processed 5,000+ user responses in Python and coded them into three personas — Emotional Catharsis, Goal Tracking, and Creative Recording. The analysis surfaced needs like automatic emotional tagging and visual review, which fed directly into feature prioritization.
Designed interview frameworks around needs, pain points, scenarios, and preferences, then ran 15+ in-depth interviews across beauty and food categories. Also planned commercial content for RedNote accounts, writing platform-native copy and contributing to brand positioning strategy.
user researchpersonasmarket analysiscontent strategy
Interdisciplinary law-and-economics research on big data industry legislation for the China Data Security Harbour project in Wenzhou. Handled data collection, legal retrieval, and policy analysis for the regulatory framework.
Led the economic analysis, building an analytical framework across data property rights, cross-border compliance, and industrial incentives to support local legislative pilots.
Coordinated legislative discussion sessions between the research team and the Wenzhou municipal government — distilling findings, keeping minutes, and helping design the research frame that structured those conversations.
data governancepolicy analysislegal research
Worked on Hong Kong IPO projects for internet companies including Bilibili, verifying and analysing user metrics such as DAU and retention to support prospectus drafting and compliance.
Conducted business analysis and due diligence for HK-listed companies, and translated and reviewed English-language legal documents — the first place I learned to read user data as a commercial argument rather than a description.
capital marketsdue diligencelegal translation
( earlier )
( training )law · research · communications
( moot court )
jessup international law moot court
Core member of the Zhejiang University team, 2020–21. Wrote the English memorials on maritime delimitation and state jurisdiction — 40+ pages of memorial and counter-memorial. Argued in the all-English oral rounds, with 100+ hours of research and mooting behind it.
( exchange )
zhi-xing china · u.s.–china young elite program
University representative, 2020–22. Led a team to Guiyang and elsewhere for regional development fieldwork, coordinating research design, analysis, and writing, and delivered the English research report and public presentation of the findings.
( communications )
chu kochen honors college alumni association
Translator and communications lead, 2020–21. Ran alumni interviews and events, wrote long-form features, and maintained the college's English-language site and WeChat channel.
04
( stage & theatre )
assistant director, script translator, costume designer — and years of learning what an audience does with a claim, long before the fieldwork started.
( theatre )
Core member on 罗密欧与祝英台, a cross-cultural adaptation that folds Romeo and Juliet into the Butterfly Lovers legend — script translation, cultural adaptation, and storyboarding, which set the narrative foundation everything else was built on.
Owned the scenographic concept: turning the script's themes into a coherent visual world of sets and props. Coordinated cast and technical crew under tight club resources, set the rehearsal schedule, and solved problems as they surfaced to carry the piece from text to stage.
Script localization and visual narrative for the club's annual productions — including 星幻, the Chinese staging of the French rock musical Starmania, where I worked behind the scenes on direction, working from the original script so the Chinese staging carried real cultural weight rather than a literal rendering.
Also helped plan the backstage publicity, turning the making of the show into shareable narrative. The production was the club's first after the pandemic and brought the group back to life on campus.
script translationdirectionpublicity
( production stills )《罗密欧与祝英台》· fanyin drama club
( backstage )costume & makeup
( the crew )curtain down
( merchandise )design for the run
the stage is where i first learned to read a room as data: what lands, what gets resisted, and how a piece changes shape once it has to be played to someone.
( productions in print )
features published by the troupes on wechat — rehearsal diaries, design notes, and opening-night write-ups.
