Fong, Vanessa L.

Vanessa Fong is interested in how the experiences of a partly transnational cohort of Chinese only-children and their families shed light on theories of education, gender, human development, economic development, transnational migration, and demographic, medical, linguistic, economic, environmental, educational, and psychological anthropology. Her research focuses on a cohort of youth born under China's one-child policy between 1979 and 1986. Fong has been engaged since 1997 in a longitudinal project that will follow this cohort and their children throughout the course of their lives. The first phase of this project was based on a survey of 2,273 members of this cohort (conducted in 1999 while they were in grades 8–12 in Dalian, China), and on over four years of participant observation in their schools and homes in China and abroad between 1997 and 2012. She is now using re-surveys of, interviews with, video recorded observations of, and participant observation among that cohort and their parents, grandparents, and children to examine how the parenting, gender socialization, educational experiences, socioeconomic conditions, academic achievement, and academic interests they had as adolescents shape their decisions and experiences now that they are young adults, especially with regards to socioeconomic stratification, childbearing, childrearing, health, consumption, transportation, and study abroad.

Vanessa Fong's CV: www.vanessafong.blogspot.com