Lina Zhou is a PhD candidate in Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies and a member of the Doctoral Program in Literary Studies at the University of Basel. She holds an MA in British and North American Cultural Studies from the University of Freiburg (Germany) and an MEd in English, Fine Art, and Educational Sciences from the University of Cologne (Germany). Her research interests lie at the intersections of literature and sociology as well as of cultural theory and popular culture.

Her PhD project focuses on the concept of autosociobiography – which refers to autobiographical narratives by authors who have experienced class mobility through education and who, from their in-between position, critically examine society and social inequality. Working with British and American texts that narrate autobiographical experiences of upward mobility at different intersections of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and nation, Lina draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology and an intersectional framework informed by Kimberlé Crenshaw to analyze how these texts represent social class, educational institutions, and the lived experience of mobility.