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Shuai graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Shandong University, China in 2013. He gained an MA in Journalism and Documentary Practice at the University of Sussex in 2018-2019. Shuai started his PhD at Loughborough University in October 2023, supervised by Professor Paula Saukko and Dr Alena Pfoser.
Social media, local communities and the modernisation of alternative therapies: An ethnographic study of Miao (Hmong) practitioners of traditional medicine
PGR Supervisors: Paula Saukko and Alena Pfoser
Shuai's research focuses on how social media reshapes the relationship between traditional medical practices, locality, sociability, and modernity in ethnic communities. His study investigates：1) How to understand the role of social media in establishing and maintaining local social (healer-patient) networks for ethnic practitioners/healers. 2) How can social media shape an informal medical sphere and mediate the tension between cultural habits and traditions within the ethnic community and the challenges of legitimisation or institutionalisation. 3) How to interpret the dilemmas of modernisation revealed by the activities of ethnic healers in communicating ethnomedicine in Short Video Media (particularly the tension between the demands of cultural heritage preservation, ethnomedicine and the locality of ethnic civilisations).
Shuai is interested in the intersection of social media and traditional ethnomedicine (including complementary medicine), qualitative research methods and ethnographic research.