Barclay Bram IS An anthropologist and ESSAYIST. His WORK HAS APPEARED FOR The Economist, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Granta, The London Review of Books, Wired and more. He was Awarded the European Journalism Centre Climate Award: Solutions & Storytelling for his work with Isobel Cockerell in the Swedish Artic.
He is currently a producer In the Economist’s Podcast department. He makes the Weekend Intelligence, a weekly narrative documentary podcast. As a host he has broken a guinness world record (fastest time to cycle to all the monopoly pieces in london), and Shadowed online vigilantes fighting scammers. As a producer He has travelled to the Arctic Circle to report on the green transition, to the parts of lagos sinking into the ocean, and been stuck in lots of traffic in mumbai.
Prior to this, 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.” The Cage, a two part series that he produced for drum tower, looking at China’s suppression of uyghur dissidents overseas was awarded a sopa award for Excellence in Audio Reporting.
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 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.
