Zed Zhipeng Gao

Zed Zhipeng Gao holds a PhD (2018) in psychology from York University, Canada. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Zed’s areas of expertise include social psychology, cultural psychology, theoretical psychology and the history of psychology. His populational/geographical focuses have been expanding from socialist China to Chinese immigrants and recently started incorporating other ethnic groups. At the empirical level, he studies issues connected to identity and social relations, including racism, nationalism, gender, mental health and belonging. At the theoretical level, he situates his research within a) transnationalism - the contested social space between nations; and b) cultural politics - the mutual penetration of cultural beliefs and politics. At the disciplinary level, he examines ontological, epistemological and ethical issues underlying the discipline of psychology.

Zed has 20 refereed essays published/forthcoming in journals and edited volumes including Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Review of General Psychology, International Journal of Psychology, History of Psychology, Social Anthropology, and Narrative Inquiry. He is guest editing a special issue on theoretical contributions from China and the Chinese diaspora to international psychology for Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (Springer). Zed holds an Outstanding Early Career Psychologist Award from the International Psychology Division of APA and a Young Scholar Award from Cheiron (International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences).

Publications
Gao, Z. (Ed. Forthcoming in 2022). Special Issue “Contemporary Innovations in Theory: Contributions from China and the Chinese Diaspora”, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, Springer.

Gao, Z. (2021, forthcoming). Political identities of Chinese international students: Patterns and change in transnational space. Forthcoming in E. Tartakovsky (Ed.) special issue “Innovations and New Discoveries in International Migration Psychology”, International Journal of Psychology.

Gao, Z. (2021, forthcoming). Unsettled belongings in deglobalization: Chinese immigrants’ struggle for political identity by using transnational media in the COVID-19 pandemic. In J. Pollock & D. Vakoch (Eds.) COVID-19 in International Communication: Responses to the Pandemic in Global Perspective. New York: Routledge.

Gao, Z. (In press). Mental health of Chinese in Canada. In H. Minas (Ed.) Mental Health in China and the Chinese Diaspora in Asia and the Pacific: Historical and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Springer.

Gao, Z. (In press). Mental health and psychiatry during the Maoist era: 1949-1976. In H. Minas (Ed.) Mental Health in China and the Chinese Diaspora in Asia and the Pacific: Historical and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Springer.

Gao, Z. (In press). From student-centered pedagogy to student labor: Chinese education’s transnational entanglement with the Cold War. In M. Solovey & C. Daye (Eds.) Cold War Social and Behavioral Sciences: International and Transnational Entanglements. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gao, Z. (2021). Unsettled belongings: Chinese immigrants’ mental health vulnerability as a symptom of international politics in the Covid-19 pandemic. In Z. Morrill, L. Hoffman & M. Yang (Eds.) Special issue “COVID-19 Part II”. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 61(2), 198-218.

Gao, Z. (2020). From empirical observation to social intervention: The Marxization of psychology in China, 1949–1958. In W. Pickren & T. Teo (Eds.) Special issue “Re-envisioning general psychology”. Review of General Psychology, 24(1), 43-59. (Recipient of the 2019 Young Scholar Award from Cheiron: The International Society for the History of Behavioral & Social Sciences)

Gao, Z. (2020). “Gems unwrought can form nothing useful”: Socialist China’s pedagogical erasure of individuality, 1949–1958. History of Education, 49(5), 661-681.

Bischoping, K. & Gao, Z. (2020). 'Learn from Lei Feng!': Education, social context, and generational memories of a Chinese Communist hero. In M. Tribukait & F. Macgilchrist (Eds.) Special issue “The politics of doing history education”. Historical Encounters: A journal of historical consciousness, historical cultures, and history education, 7(2), 10-25.

Gao, Z. (2019). Forging Marxist psychology in China’s Cold War geopolitics, 1949–1965. In H. Y. Wu (Ed.) Special issue “History of psychology and psychiatry in the global world”. History of Psychology, 22(4), 309-327.

Gao, Z. (2019). Psychology. In H. Chiang. (Ed.) The Making of the Human Sciences in China: Historical and Conceptual Foundations (pp. 283-302). Leiden: Brill.

Gao, Z. & Bischoping, K. (2019). The Communist hero and the April Fool’s joke: A case study in the cultural politics of authenticity and fakery. In M. Krings, C. Kilian & J. Beek (Eds.) Special issue “An anthropology of defrauding and faking”. Social Anthropology, 27(3), 438-454.

Gao, Z. & Bischoping, K. (2018). The emergence of an elder-blaming discourse in 21st-century China. In L. L. Thang & W-J. J. Yeung (Eds.) Special issue “Elder-care issues in Southeast and East Asia”. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 33(2), 197-215.

Bischoping, K. & Gao, Z. (2018). Reframing generations scholarship through the eyes of everyday Chinese. Chinese Sociological Dialogue, 3(2), 133-147.