Tyler Rooker
Lecturer, Contemporary Chinese Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences
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Biography
Tyler Rooker is lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Studies, with a specialism in Chinese Business. His most recent work is as a postdoctoral research association for University of Oxford COMPAS and Goldsmiths College on the ESRC World Economy and Finance Programme sponsored project "Risk Cultures in China", where he did ethnographic and sociological research on China's securities and real estate markets. In 2009, Tyler became the first non-natural science postdoc at Peking University, focusing on science and technology in China. He has also conducted research in China on low-carbon technology for NESTA. Tyler graduated from the University of California (2006) with a Ph.D. in anthropology for his dissertation on Zhongguancun, known as the Silicon Valley of China. He received the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad grant to conduct the Zhongguancun research. He also received a Master's in Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a bachelor's degree in physics from Carleton College.
Tyler's research areas focus on companies and businesses in China, both from an economic and a socio-cultural perspective. He has done professional research on urban culture, migration, science and technology, user-centred design, corporate anthropology, and economic sociology.
Tyler has worked in conjunction with Sprint Nextel, Sub-Zero & Wolf, UFIDA, bulthaup, Twentieth Century Fox, China Software Industry Association, and Shenzhen Information Office in various consulting and business roles.
Tyler is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, passing the HSK with a score of 7 in 2001, and living in China for seven of the last eleven years. He has translated between English and Chinese for professional journals, international conferences, and Hollywood companies.
Expertise Summary
China business, society and economy, China science and technology, ethnographic research, migration in China, real estate development in urban China, comparative capitalism, urban culture, companies as forms of social organization.