Adam Yuet Chau

Professor Adam Yuet Chau is a Fellow and Director of Studies at St John's College and holds the Professor of the Anthropology of China position at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. His academic journey includes training at Stanford University (PhD in Anthropology, 2001) and teaching roles at Oxford and SOAS before joining Cambridge in 2008.

• Focus on Chinese religions and their social dimensions
• Specializes in ritual theory and cultural transformations
• Develops comparative frameworks for understanding religious practices

His research spans religion under socialism, hosting in political/religious contexts, and ritual polytropy. Recent projects include editing Chinese Religious Culture in 100 Objects and analyzing 'spheres' (界) in Chinese society. Publications like Miraculous Response (2006) and Religion in Contemporary China (2011) establish him as a key figure in religious anthropology.

Current and past PhD/MPhil students explore topics from temple festivals in Taiwan to religious subjectification. He actively reviews for leading presses (Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard) and journals (Ethnos, Modern China), and participates in international academic workshops.