Jing Xu

Jing Xu is a Research Scientist and Part-Time Lecturer at the University of Washington. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis (2014) and conducted postdoctoral research in Developmental Psychology at the University of Washington (2014–2016). Her work bridges anthropology and psychology, focusing on moral development, childhood, and cross-cultural cognition. Key research themes include moral education in contemporary China, historical studies of Taiwanese childhood under martial law, and comparative socio-moral cognition.

Her publications include The Good Child (2017) and ‘Unruly’ Children (2024), analyzing moral development through ethnography and computational methods. She leads projects funded by Templeton World Charity Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), exploring truth-seeking in youth and knowledge transmission across cultures. Xu co-edits American Anthropologist’s “World Anthropologies” section, advocating for public relevance in scholarship.

Her research integrates fieldwork, experiments, and computational tools (e.g., NLP), emphasizing children’s agency in learning. Ongoing work explores intersections of human and artificial intelligence. Xu’s interdisciplinary approach challenges Western-centric research frameworks, promoting inclusive methodologies through projects like A Field Guide to Cross-Cultural Research on Childhood Learning.