Biography
Yuefei is a Ph.D student in the combined program of Anthropology and Environment at Yale. She is currently curious about how spirits, magic, and local cosmologies intersect with ecological and political transformation in Southeast Asia.
Yuefei is also a filmmaker. Trained in visual anthropology, she loves to explore multiple methods to probe the “visible/invisible” dynamics behind everyday life. Her Ethnofiction film What do ghosts think? follows the supernatural narratives surrounding Indonesia’s new capital project in Borneo. The film has screened at various ethnographic film festivals and academic conferences, and received the Best Student Film Awards from the Society for Visual Anthropology at the 2025 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, as well as at the 2025 Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival. It was selected by Images en bibliothèques after being nominated in the Jean Rouch International Film Festival.
During fieldwork, she always finds comfort in soups and seasonal fruits, such as durian and langsat.
Research Interests (Key words)
Spirits and Ghosts, Magics and Nature, Humor and laughter, Visual Methods, Feminine Writing, Collaborative Filmmaking, Borneo, Southeast Asia