Hello! My name is Suvi Rautio and I am an anthropologist specializing on China.
Background
Born in Helsinki, I moved to Beijing at the age of two in 1987. I spent my childhood between Beijing and Singapore. In my adult years, my studies and career have since taken me to Beijing, Guizhou, London, Glasgow, Helsinki, and New York City.
Research Interests
As of spring 2025, I have been working on a EU-funded Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow project.
Trained as a social and cultural anthropologist, my research engages with collective memory, cultural heritage, and the lived dynamics of encounter.
My academic research has brought me to live amongst locals in a Dong ethnic minority village in Guizhou (Southwest China); to dance with African dance entrepreneurs in Guangzhou; and more recently, documenting the life histories of the offspring of Chinese intellectuals that lived through the turmoil of the Maoist era in Beijing.
I examine how political violence, revolution, and state projects shape intimate family relationships. I am particularly drawn to make sense of how ‘othering’ and stigmatization are shaped by political and social experiences in contemporary China — and how people continue to live with these consequences.
As an ethnographer committed to doing research that is grounded in long-term fieldwork, my projects bridge political anthropology and intimate life to study how large political transformations become embedded in intimate lives, family memory, and everyday social worlds.
In addition to my research and writing projects, I am an active podcast host for New Books Network Chinese studies.
关于 Suvi Rautio 苏葳
芬兰赫尔辛基大学博士后，出生于赫尔辛基，在北京度过了童年和少年时期，青年时期曾在北京环保组织工作。2014年，我在赫尔辛基大学开始读博士后，我的人类学方向研究方向是文化遗产，集体记忆、国家认同及边缘性。2015-2016年间，我只身一人到贵州的一个偏远侗寨居住了一年，研究村民的生活方式和村子的发展。离开村寨后，她就此次田野调查写了一本书，名为《The Invention of Tradition in China: Story of a Village and Nation Remade》。
Education
2019 Ph.D., University of Helsinki, Social & Cultural Anthropology
2010 MA, London School of Economics
2007 MSc, University of Glasgow
SUVI RAUTIO 