Yichen Rao

Yichen Rao is a postdoctoral associate in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing (affiliated with the MIT Game Lab). He recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan after receiving his Ph.D. in Anthropology and STS from the University of Hong Kong in 2021. He conducts ethnographic studies on the socio-cultural impacts of digital capitalism, such as the gaming and fintech industries. He has published on a wide range of topics, including digital lending apps and remote debt collection, Animal Crossing fever during the pandemic, and League of Legends players in China's controversial internet addiction treatment camps. After the fellowship, he will join Utrecht University as an assistant professor of anthropology.