Ding Fei

Ding Fei is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work sits at the nexus of international development planning, migration and labor studies, and economic geography. Her research is driven by a central question: How do transnational actors—states, firms, and individuals—shape and experience international development in an increasingly multipolar world? Focusing on China-Africa cooperation, her work offers a grounded, multi-scalar perspective on international development planning—moving beyond inter-state diplomacy and national policy frameworks to examine how development is enacted, negotiated, and contested across sites of production, governance, and everyday life. Through multiple research projects, Fei investigates how ideas and institutions drawn from China’s development experience travel, transform, and are reappropriated across diverse African contexts, reshaping infrastructure governance, industrial policy, labor regimes, and urban changes.