Data Science Institute

Jinying Li is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She focuses her teaching and research on media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. Her essays on Asian cinema, animation, and digital media have been published in Film International, Mechademia, the International Journal of Communication, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Asiascape, Asian Cinema, and Camera Obscura. She co-edited two special issues on Chinese animation for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and a special issue on regional platforms for Asiascape: Digital Asia. Her first book, Anime's Knowledge Cultures (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), explores the connection between the anime boom and global geekdom. She is currently completing her second book, Walled Media and Mediating Walls. Jinying is also a filmmaker and has worked on animations, feature films, and documentaries. Two documentary TV series that she produced were broadcasted nationwide in China through Shanghai Media Group (SMG). She is one of the co-writers of animated feature film Big Fish and Begonia (Dayu Haitang, 2016). She also produced an experimental VR documentary 47km (2017) in collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Mengqi at Beijing Film Academy.

How does your research, teaching, or other work relate to data or computational science?

I teach digital media in Modern Culture and Media (MCM) with particular focus on the history, culture, and technology of computational media. My research interest includes history of computing, network cultures, artificial intelligence, and information science broadly. I've organized Critical Computing speaker series in MCM, in collaboration with the Socially Responsible Computing Program in Computer Science department. I am currently serving on the steering committee in Brown's STS program, trying to generate communications and collaborations between media studies and STS, especially in the area of digital technologies and computational media. I hope further communications and collaborations between MCM and DSI will contribute to both fields by generating vibrant discussions and projects that study the intricate relationship between modern media and data science with historical and theoretical depths.