Dr Tom Cliff

Tom Cliff is an ethnographer of Chinese political economy at the Australian National University.

Education Activities: Tom is Associate Dean (Education) of the College of Asia and the Pacific and the founding convenor of the Bachelor of Philosophy (Humanities and Social Sciences) — the ANU's elite and demanding undergraduate research program in the HaSS disciplines. He teaches ASIA2099/6099 Social Power in China: Family to Family-State and ASIA3039 Thinking About Thought: Ethics and AI in Asian and Pacific Studies.

Research Activities: Tom is currently writing a book on political ideals and practices in China. The immediate context is rural non-state welfare and industrial restructuring in the PRC. 

Tom’s book project-in-waiting is a study of categorisation and the realms of political consciousness through the Socialist and Post-Socialist eras in the PRC; it will be told through biography, ethnography, and documents of government.

In 2018, Tom's first book Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang (Chicago University Press, 2016) won the Association for Asian Studies' E Gene Smith prize for Best Book on Inner Asia. 

Please see Google Scholar for recent publications.