Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Institut für Europäische Ethnologie

Research Interests

urban anthropology // China // elemental urbanism // water & climate // boundary space // participation and everyday practices // ethnographic and visual methods // mapping

Short Description

Tianyu Zhu is a researcher specialising in urban anthropology and micro-scale urban spaces, with a background in architecture and urban design. Her previous work has explored how macro scale agents, such as urban development policies, traditional culture, social values, and emotions, interact within micro-scale urban situations to stimulate the emergence of different spaces. 

At the IfEE, she is part of the SFB research project “The Urban Microclimate Regime: How Elemental Forces Shape Urban Climate Adaptation Policies”, contributing to research on how water and nature- based solutions reshape knowledge of urban spaces, particularly with regard to urban climate adaptation policies and sponge city initiatives in China, where different approaches to knowledge meet, clash and are reworked in practice.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, she has developed a mapping method combining ethnographic data and graphic analysis to trace intricate networks between human and non-human, material and immaterial actors and reveal nodes and gaps in concrete assemblages of spatial practices.

Alongside her academic work, her experience in architectural practice informs her interest in connecting research outcomes with planning and design problems.