Li Zhang

Dr. Li Zhang is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Amherst College. She researches food safety in China and issues of global health, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her book on The Origins of COVID-19: China and Global Capitalism is published with Stanford University Press, and she is developing new research projects in public policy and management of food, environment, gender, science & technology, and public health.

She is working on a second book, using ethnographic methods to research both top-down government interventions in food safety regulations, and grassroots efforts for self-protection from the food safety crisis.

She is Co-PI of a national research project (funded by the National Institute for Food and Agriculture – USDA) on the impact of COVID-19 on food supply chains, focusing on how “alternative food networks” have emerged to increase the resilience of our food systems in the face of this crisis.