Zoe Zhao

About me

I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My interdisciplinary research centers on digital labor, platformization, and social movements, with a particular focus on new forms of work, technology, diaspora and labor activism under digital capitalism. My art practice leverages gamification to reimagine ways of commoning and queering the care infrastructure.

My book project, “Strategic Play: The Labor Politics of Online Gaming Services in China,” historizes and analyzes the platformization, labor processes, and social implications of the play-to-earn economy in China and the Sinophone diaspora. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography, longitudinal interviews, and archival research conducted since 2019, the project examines a dozen different forms of platform game work—including live streaming, paid boosting, and game companionship—that have attracted millions of surplus workers. Click here for my academic CV or see the research tab for published work related to this project and other side quests.

Beyond academia, I use emerging media to engage in discussions of labor, gender, and disability rights. As a member of the Liquid Dependencies Theory (LDT) collective, I co-designed an interactive role-playing (LARP) game called Liquid Dependencies, a gamified derivative of the ReUnion Network that promotes a decentralized care-based society. 

Being neurodiverse and often roaming through other universes, I enjoy freelance writing, video gaming, rock climbing, music creation, and anonymous organizing.