Dr Xin Xin is Reader in International Communications at the University of Westminster and a member of CAMRI and the Contemporary China Centre. A founding editorial board member of Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture—where she guest‑edited the special issue “Media in China”—and Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, her career spans over three decades across journalism, scholarship, and policy and public engagement.

After completing a BA in Russian Language and Literature at Beijing International Studies University in 1994, Xin spent seven years reporting for Xinhua News Agency in Beijing, including a China Scholarship Council–funded visiting fellowship in Moscow. She went on to earn an MA in International Journalism (2002–2003) and a PhD in Media and Communication (2003–2006) at Westminster; her thesis on Xinhua underpins her first monograph, How the Market Is Changing China’s News (Lexington, 2012).

Xin has published extensively in leading journals, including Media, Culture & Society, Javnost – The Public, Global Media and Communication, TripleC and Journalism Practice. She is currently completing her second monograph, China’s Digital Soft Power (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming/2026), which represents the first longitudinal, cross‑national study of China’s digital‑era soft power.

She has held a prestigious RCUK Academic Fellowship (2006–2011) and a UK/China Fellowship for Excellence (DIUS, 2008–2009), and has secured grants from the British Academy, RCUK China/DIUS, the Universities’ China Committee in London and Westminster’s Developing Researchers Initiative. She also regularly serves as a reviewer for academic journals, scholarly publishers and research funding bodies.

Since 2006, Xin has led CAMRI’s Chinese Media research strand and, at her initiative, founded and co‑organised eleven international doctoral summer schools with Communication University of China (CUC), Chinese University of Hong Kong and Simon Fraser University (2009–2019).

As Director of Studies, she has supervised four PhD candidates to completion—one under a Techne scholarship—and served as second supervisor for over ten others. Xin has delivered public and guest lectures at institutions including Bowling Green State University, University of Pennsylvania, Renmin University of China and CUC. She has also supported postgraduate and early‑career research networks across the UK, Europe and the US, engaging communities at Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Leiden, Perugia, Tartu, Philadelphia and beyond.

Beyond academia, Xin has provided consultancy to Oxford Analytica, developed journalist training programmes with the Media Diversity Institute, contributed to roundtables at Wilton Park and the British Council, and authored a chapter on China’s soft power for the EUNIC Yearbook, engaging with EU cultural policy discussions. She has joined discussions and debates at Battle of Ideas, the International Journalism Festival and the Cambridge Union. Her insights have been cited in Al Jazeera, NBC News, The Washington Post and Columbia Journalism Review among other media outlets.

Research

Xin’s research bridges the political economy of Chinese media, global communications, soft power, the sociology of journalism and grassroots digital practice. Her early research analysed how marketisation, globalisation, financialisation and digitalisation transformed legacy news organisations—most notably Xinhua News Agency—reshaping their business models and journalistic routines. She has also examined how state and corporate actors deploy soft power and cultural diplomacy—across journalism, film, education and social media—to influence, and be influenced by, international narratives about China. In parallel, Xin has highlighted the role of grassroots “citizen journalism” and its entanglements with mainstream media in exposing social injustices.

Building on this foundation, her current work explores how young people in both urban and rural China leverage AI tools, social platforms and digital storytelling to navigate social, economic and environmental challenges. She is also conducting a comparative study of digital inclusion, platform labour and media governance across BRICS nations, investigating how emerging economies manage technological changes and assert cultural agency within an unequal global digital order.

Xin welcomes PhD applications on topics related to digital media, youth cultures, sustainability and the geopolitics of technology. She is currently Director of Studies for Haiyue Zhang, Ruoyu Zhang and Wenxuan Wang.