Jun is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology with a certificate in the Science, Technology & Society Program. Her research interests intersect gender, work/labor, science and technology studies, and political economy. She is the 2024 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellow and is currently a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Sociology for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Jun's dissertation examines feminized livestreaming labor—the largest form of platform-based employment for women in China—within the broader history of women’s labor in the post-socialist era. The study analyzes how digitalization reshapes human-machine relations in the workplace and explores the socio-economic and political implications for gender and family dynamics. Her previous project explored the hidden costs of flexibility in the informal economy, focusing on how informal and irregular workers in the U.S. navigate blurred work-family environments.
Jun's research has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Institute for Research on Women & Gender (IRWG), the International Institute, the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, and the Rackham Graduate School. Her work has received multiple paper awards, including from the American Sociological Association (ASA) Economic Sociology section, Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, and the Ethnological and Historical Sciences at the University of Chicago. Her ethnographic photos have won the Ethno-Photography Award from the Annual Chicago Ethnography Conference and the Best Photo Award from the UM International Institute.
Before pursuing her doctorate, Jun built extensive experience in gender and sexuality education and activism. In Beijing, she taught migrant children and contributed to the nation’s first comprehensive sexuality education textbooks while supporting feminist and LGBTQ+ initiatives. Later, while studying Gender and Development in London, she engaged in street outreach for two U.K. non-profits, where she helped develop educational programs for refugee children impacted by gender-based violence.
