Heila Sha (Saheira Haliel)

Dr Heila Sha (Saheira Haliel)

  • Researcher

Research Fellow and social anthropologist in Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR), Coventry University

Dr Heila Sha (Saheira Haliel) is a Research Fellow and social anthropologist in Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR) at the Coventry University. She works on South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub, with a focus on migration intermediaries.

Saheira completed her PhD at Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany in July 2015. Her PhD research focused on inter-generational transformations of family life, care, and gender relations in response to urbanization, migration and socio-economic transformations in Northwest China. Based on her PhD dissertation, she published her first book in 2017, titled Care and Aging in Northwest China.

In April 2016, she joined University of Sussex (UK) as a postdoctoral research fellow. She was one of the members of ERC-funded project entitled “Yiwu: Trust, Global Traders and Commodities in a Chinese International City” (TRODITIES). Her research focused on the interactions between local and incoming Chinese citizens and international traders across the domains of business practice, marriage, friendship, sexuality, and cultural life more generally. She particular engaged with the topics: trade agencies and global trading networks; trade, gender and employment; transnational marriage between Chinese women and foreign traders.

Research interests:

Kinship and family studies, ageing, gender, marriage, care and wellbeing, migration, transnationalism, globalization, governance and development, trade and entrepreneurship, bazaars and markets, consumerism, social anthropology, anthropology of post-socialism, China.