Barclay Bram IS An anthropologist and ESSAYIST WHOSE WORK HAS APPEARED FOR The New York Times, The Financial Times, Granta, The London Review of Books, Wired, VICE, DAZED, SIXTH TONE, ROADS&KINGDOMS, THE MILLIONS, and more. He was shortlisted for the 2019 FT/Bodley head essay prize.
He is currently a producer In the Economist’s Podcast department. He was a producer on the prince, the first long-form audio series from the economist. it is an 8-part biography of Chinese leader xi jinping. it was nominated for a british press award for podast of the year, as well as A national magazine award for podcasting. it was also the new yorker’s #2 podcast of the year 2022. New York Magazine’s Vulture described it as delivering “an expansive look at one of the most powerful people in the world in the run-up to a defining Party Congress that saw him consolidate power even further.”
HE completed A DPHIL IN OXFORD University’s SCHOOL OF Global AREA STUDIES in 2021. His thesis focused on ethnographic research into mental health and therapy in china, based on 14 months of fieldwork with psychological counsellors in chengdu, sichuan province, in 2018/19. HE Was awarded A FULL SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL for this project.
Since Graduating he has been a junior fellow in the asia society’s centre for china analysis. his first project for the centre, “the 19%” looked at the social consequences of china’s high unemployment rate for urban youth. across a series of papers he investigated the ways in which this figure impacts young people, changing their expectations for the future, increasing their levels of anxiety and mental health issues, their willingness to have children, and their attachment to the nationalist project of the government.
his work focuses on self-making, healing and the impact that technology has on contemporary life.
