Research

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

Lu, Yao. Forthcoming. “Enumerating Race and Ethnicity in Post-Colonial Africa, 1955-2024.” Ethnicities.

Yan, Hairong, Barry Sautman, and Yao Lu. 2021. “Contract Mobility, Self Mobility, and Chinese Localization in Africa.” Open Times. 1:131-155. [In Chinese: 严海蓉、沙伯力、路瑶.“合同
流动、自主流动和中国人在非洲的本地化.”《开放时代》].

Yan, Hairong, Barry Sautman, and Yao Lu. 2019. “Chinese and ‘Self-Segregation’ in Africa.” Asian Ethnicity 20(1): 40–66. Reprinted in Chinese in Africa: ‘Chineseness’ and the Complexities
of Identities, edited by Obert Hodzi (Routledge, 2020).

WORK IN PROGRESS

“Classifying Race and Ethnicity in Africa: Violence, Legibility, and Concealment in Zambia and Zimbabwe.” (Presented at the 2025 Junior Theorists Symposium).

“Bringing Colonial Categories Back: Colonial Legacy, Party Formation, and Ethnic Violence in Zimbabwe.” (with Stephanie L. Mudge)

“From Racial Capitalism to Peripheral Crisis: Oral Histories of Zambia and Zimbabwe in the Neoliberal Age.” (To be presented at the 2026 Social Science History Association Annual Meeting and the 2026 African Studies Association Annual Meeting).

“Filling the Archival Gap for Whom? Oral History and Collective Knowledge Production in Zambia.” (To be presented at The Archival Gap in the Global Imagination, Stanford University, February 2027).

“Enumerating Nationality and Citizenship in Post-Colonial Africa, 1955-2024.”

“The Political Economy of Mobile Money in Africa.” (with Stephanie L. Mudge).