環境共生研究部門・機関研究員
PhD in Area Studies (Kyoto University) 　
Specialty: Area Studies, Land Use, Rural Development

My name is Xiaobo Hua, working as a Postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University since April 2019. I earned Doctor’s degree in Area Studies at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University in March 2019 and received my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Land Management at Southwest University, China, in 2011 and 2014, respectively.

　 I was born in a beautiful coastal city in China. I had very few chances to see mountains until I went to university. Since then, I have been fascinated by the beauty of nature and distinctive lifestyles in mountains. Consequently, all of my research then focuses on the nexus of people, environment and mountain. Specifically, I am interested in land use change, labor migration, livelihood transition and rural development in mainland Southeast Asia and Southwest China. During my doctoral course, I explored how to explicitly describe, track and interpret the agrarian transformation in Yunnan frontier of the China-ASEAN borderland in the context of region integration and trans-regional or trans-national linkages. During the period of master training, I conducted my research in mountainous areas in Chongqing, Western Sichuan and Tibetan Plateau, focusing on agrarian change in the context of institutional changes, labor out-migration, pasture degradation, human-wildlife conflict and climate change. Some of my work have been published in Land Use Policy, Ecological Indicators, Crop Protection, Mountain Research and Development, Journal of Geographical Sciences, etc.

　 I am very lucky to be appointed as a new staff in CSEAS. I enjoy reading rich materials from library, attending seminars on different disciplines and from different perspectives and discussing with excellent scholars here. Particularly, I like crossing the border from human society to nature, enjoying walking, reading and taking a rest near the Kamo River. Here, I always get inspiration from people and nature on my on-going research about agrarian transformations under small-scale fruit investment in the China-Myanmar and China-Laos borderlands. This project aims to understand how local smallholders in both sides along the China-Myanmar-Laos border respond to market-oriented processes (China's rapid emergence and significant influence), to both track and interpret the dynamics and transitions in livelihoods and land-uses, and to compare and discuss the differentiation and concordance with similar cases. I would synthesize the perspectives from border(land) studies, agrarian studies, land-change science, etc.