Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor of China Studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Expert Bio

Timothy A. Grose is an associate professor of China Studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. His work has been published in The China Journal, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Hau, and other leading journals. His 2019 book Negotiating Inseparability in China (Hong Kong University Press) was awarded the 2020 Central Eurasian Studies Society book prize in the social sciences. His second book, Settling Xinjiang, is currently under review at the University of Washington Press. His commentary on the crisis in the Uyghur homelands has appeared in ChinaFile, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, and Sup China, among others. 

Wilson Center Project

The Surveillance State Comes Home: Disseminating the Decimation of Uyghur Identity Across Xinjiang

Project Summary

This Wilson Center China Fellowship project will draw extensively on seldomly analyzed Chinese government social media posts and cadre blogs reporting on the CCP’s “Village Stay” campaigns in Xinjiang to tell a contextualized and highly nuanced story of the everyday lives of Uyghurs. Utilizing methodologies in digital ethnography and open-source intelligence (OSINT) sheds light on conditions under which Uyghurs toil daily enduring social and cultural confinement under the surveillance of low-ranking officials in their home villages. Subsumed by these conditions, virtually all religious practice has been criminalized, the Uyghur language has been removed from public school, and traditional communities have been uprooted. This ongoing reality suggests that current US sanctions have not improved conditions on the ground for Uyghurs.