Staff profile

I am an anthropologist interested in the intersection of ecology, health, spirituality, healing, and activism. As an Asian specialist, I have conducted long-term fieldwork in various parts of China, including Hong Kong and Macau. I received my DPhil in Anthropology from Oxford University and was a Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Germany in 2023.

My first project was an ethnographic study of 'green living' in Hong Kong, an environmental and cultural movement that encompasses a wide range of activities such as sustainable gardening, freeganism and freecycling, zero waste initiatives, non-toxic living, spirituality, and more. I demonstrate that green living is not entirely an emerging lifestyle originating from the West, but a form of prefigurative environmentalism that has root in traditional Chinese philosophy.

Building on my interest in agency and environmental movements, my second project, funded by the ERC and titled 'Toxic Expertise: Environmental Justice and the Global Petrochemical Industry' (Grant Agreement No. 639583), focused on the ways Chinese people live with toxic pollution by bargaining with their toxic heritage and coping through unnoticing, as well as the lack of chemo-solidarity in the face of environmental injustice.

I have a sustained interest in health, healing, ethnomedicine, and medical pluralism. Prior to my academic career, I had worked as a public health researcher and medical translator within the NHS, and had written on nationalism and the legitimacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in postcolonial Macau and other former Portuguese colonies. 

My current research focuses on the world of healing outside the clinic amid the growing mental health crisis, with a focus on Global Asia. Through an ethnographic exploration of healing and self-care at the intersection of ecology, health, and spirituality—a convergence that has received limited attention—I aim to revive the 'art of healing' as a vital component, not just a complement to, the 'science of medicine' (Cohen 2023). Another goal of the project is to revisit what 'taking responsibility' means in the context of health beyond the theory of responsibilization. 

Underpinning all of my research are questions that revolve around agency, the interplay between self-cultivation and social transformation, responsibility, and the production of knowledge and ignorance in the most mundane areas of people’s everyday lives. I am an advocate of interdisciplinarity and strive to produce work that is accessible to audiences in multiple fields.

At Durham, I teach modules on the Anthropocene, Critical Global Health, Planetary Health, and Social Movements in the Department of Anthropology. I was a finalist for two teaching awards in 2024: 'Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning' and 'Inspirational Educator'. 

My latest publications can be found here.

• Ecology and Environmentalism
• Health and Wellbeing
• Mental health
• Spirituality
• Buddhism
• Therapies and Healing
• Self-care and Self-cultivation
• Social movements
• East and Southeast Asia, especially China

• 2023: Landhaus Fellow & Society of Fellows, Rachel Carson Center, LMU München, Germany:
• 2023: Fellow, Institute for Medical Humanities:
• 2022: Co-editor-in-chief of Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies:
• 2018: Lay Examiner (MRCOG Part 3), Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists:
• 2016: Editor in Asian Studies, Amsterdam University Press:

Book review

• Lou, L. I. T. (2018). Review of Transforming Patriarchy: Chinese Families in the Twenty-First Century Edited by Gonçalo Santos and Stevan Harrell. Seattle, WA, and London: University of Washington Press, 2016. China Quarterly, 233, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305741018000292
• Lou, L. I. (2014). Review of "Green Politics in China: Environmental Governance and State–Society Relations", by Joy Y. Zhang and Michael Barr. London: Pluto Press, 2013. The China journal (Canberra, A.C.T. Online), 72, https://doi.org/10.1086/677088

Chapter in book

• Lou, L. I. (2023). Preservation by Demolition: Toxic Heritage in Contemporary China. In E. Kryder-Reid, & S. May (Eds.), Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice (174-198). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003365259-20
• Lou, L. I. (2022). From Hygienic Modernity to Green Modernity: Two Modes of Modern Living in Hong Kong Since the 1970s. In Y. Lee, & M. Rajguru (Eds.), Design and Modernity in Asia: National Identity And Transnational Exchange 1945–1990 (105-120). Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350091498.ch-6

Journal Article

• Lou, L. I. T. (2023). Healing Nature: Spiritual Ecology, Self-Cultivation, and Social Transformation in Hong Kong. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, Ecology, 27, 189–209. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685357-02703004
• Lou, L. I. T. (2022). The art of unnoticing: Risk perception and contrived ignorance in China. American Ethnologist, 49(4), 580-594. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13099
• Lou, L. (2021). Casino capitalism in the era of COVID-19: examining Macau’s pandemic response. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, 17(2), 69-79. https://doi.org/10.1108/stics-09-2020-0025
• Graeber, D., & Lou, L. I. T. (2019). Bullshit Jobs: A Conversation with David Graeber. Made in China (Canberra, A.C.T. Online), 4(2), https://doi.org/10.22459/mic.04.02.2019.19
• Fabian, N., & Lou, L. I. T. (2019). The Struggle for Sustainable Waste Management in Hong Kong: 1950s–2010s. Worldwide Waste, 2(1), https://doi.org/10.5334/wwwj.40
• Lou, L. I. T. (2019). Freedom as ethical practices: on the possibility of freedom through freeganism and freecycling in Hong Kong. Asian Anthropology, 18(4), 249-265. https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478x.2019.1633728
• Lou, L. I. T. (2017). The Material Culture of Green Living in Hong Kong. Anthropology Now, 9(1), https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2017.1291055
• Lou, L. I. T. (2017). In the Absence of a Peasantry, What, Then, Is a Hong Kong Farmer?. Made in China (Canberra, A.C.T. Online), 2(4), https://doi.org/10.22459/mic.02.04.2017.10