Bio
Julia’s doctoral research examines the emergence of virtual influencers—AI- and CGI-generated humanlike characters—on contemporary social media platforms. Drawing from Platform Studies and Cultural Studies, she introduces the theoretical framework of ‘virtual skin’ to analyze racial and gendered embodiment in immersive and augmented digital spaces. This framework connects platform infrastructures and logics with historical patterns of racial representation. Her work investigates the commodification of virtual skin and its relationship to identity performance and emerging forms of racialization in virtual environments. Through this lens, she examines how skin is technically calibrated and rendered, revealing complex paradoxes surrounding race and beauty standards within social media ecosystems.
Julia’s adjacent research interests include the Korean Wave (‘Hallyu’) and the implications of East Asian popular media and fandom for theories of affect and globalization. She has written on ethnic and diasporic media, AI-generated synthetic media, KPOP, Internet culture, and girlhood for Feminist Theory, Canadian Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Global Diaspora & Migration.
As a former Strategic Communications Advisor for Statistics Canada, Julia conducted workshops on AI bias and social media for directors and researchers in the public service. Her community engagement work has involved a partnership with STACKT market for Asian Heritage Month, funded by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, and well as knowledge translation projects through outlets such as Teen Vogue, The Conversation, Koffler Centre of the Arts, and Vancouver TAIWANfest.
Her research is graciously funded by the SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Award, the Canadian Heritage-SSHRC Initiative for Digital Citizen Research, and the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement.
Specializations
Asian media studies, platform labour, social media, feminist science and technology studies, social media influencers, popular culture, fandom studies
Degrees
- BA English Literature & Sociology, University of British Columbia
- MSc Comparative and International Education, University of Oxford
Committees and Affiliations
- Visiting Academic (2024-2025), Asian/Pacific/American Institute, NYU