About

Zizi Li is an educator and researcher of media studies and digital cultures, with a special attention to (im)material labor and infrastructure via the study of influencer media. She inquires the relationships between media and extraction concerning the layered extraction of natural / human resources and racialized / gendered labor required by the operation of digital economy.

Currently Zizi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her dissertation on influencer ecosystem uses fashion/lifestyle influencers and related vernacular social media genre / content (such as closet declutter and unboxing videos) to elucidate the connections between digital/media industries and commodity chains/networks.

Zizi is trained in film studies, cultural studies, critical digital studies, feminist media studies / praxis, and transnational media. Her research and pedagogy are committed to the unpacking of entangled colonialisms as well as the building of transnational solidarity praxis and abolitionist decolonial care.