Xuexin Cai

Xuexin Cai grew up in a farming family in northwest China, where his parents cultivated vegetables and fruits in fields both nourished and threatened by the Yellow River. There, his interest in agriculture and in relations between human beings and the more-than-human world first took root. At 15, he left what had become a disappearing village on the edge of a rapidly expanding industrial city to continue his education in Singapore on a scholarship. He later completed his undergraduate studies in the Middle East on another scholarship before returning to China to live and work in Yunnan, a mountainous province in the southwest and the focus of his undergraduate research on tea production and trade.

In Yunnan, Xuexin served as a teacher and vice principal of a village primary school in a multiethnic region, where he began learning from local residents about the socioeconomic and environmental challenges experienced by different generations and ethnic communities. He also began collaborating with friends, colleagues, and local and external partners to build a safer, healthier, and more diverse and sustainable learning and living environment for students and teachers. These years in Yunnan profoundly shaped his research interests and methods, paving the way for his current doctoral work at Columbia University.

Xuexin's PhD research combines archival and ethnographic approaches to explore the socio-environmental history of southern Yunnan, one of the world’s most biologically and culturally diverse regions. Just as his research is deeply rooted in place while attentive to transregional forces and comparative perspectives, Xuexin believes in the power of place-based learning that engages thoughtfully with issues across spatial scales. In both his scholarship and teaching, he strives to break down the artificial boundaries between intellectual and manual work, and between the human and the natural.