Core Team

Will Thomson

I am an anthropologist with a focus on relations of design to labor in a global context, rural-urban migration, and Chinese contemporary social life. I spent two years of fieldwork research on Chinese construction sites and in local design offices in western central China from 2010-12, with grants from the Wenner Gren Foundation, US National Science Foundation, and the US Social Science Research Council. I hold a doctoral degree in socio-cultural anthropology from NYU (2015). After the PhD, I held postdoc, research, and lecture positions in Chinese studies and architecture at the University of Michigan and MIT before moving to Newcastle in 2021 to join the TF/TK [https://tf-tk.com] project as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. My current manuscript project, China Constructs is under contract with MIT Press in the Labor and Technology series. 

My role in Reimaging Leadership team is as PDRA responsible for the evaluation of the project: asking what is working, how and why. I bring to this project my training and experience in anthropological ethnographic research, along with a critical global perspective on higher education. Before turning to anthropology, I worked for seven years in digital media and public radio journalism. Outside of work, I enjoy travel, playing piano and oboe as well as printmaking.