Bio
Julia’s doctoral research addresses the racial baggage of ‘virtual influencers,’ AI- or CGI- generated humanlike characters who exist on popular social media platforms as fashion models and influencers. Her conceptualization of ‘virtual skin,’ a framework to analyze racial and gendered embodiment in immersive and augmented digital spaces, is inspired by scholarship in Asian North American Studies, Feminist Science and Technology Studies, and Platform Studies.
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 Strategic Communications Advisor for Statistics Canada, Julia conducts 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