Yujie Zhu is a researcher and educator who brings a critical, interdisciplinary, and future-oriented lens to the study of heritage, memory, and social transformation. Trained in anthropology, with a PhD from Heidelberg University, Germany, his work investigates how heritage and narratives of the past are constructed, contested, and mobilised to shape governance, identity, and state–society relations across diverse cultural, political, and spatial contexts.

His research focuses on the politics of heritage in East Asia, with particular attention to memory politics, conflict and reconciliation, religious spaces, and the political economy of tourism. His broader aim is to reconceptualise heritage as a field of critical inquiry and ethical engagement—one that links local practices with global debates and connects past injustices with future possibilities.

Yujie is the author of five books, co-editor of four edited volumes and four special issues, and has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and policy reports. According to Google Scholar, his work has received over 1,950 citations, with an H-index of 21. His recent books include Making Places Sacred (Cambridge, 2025, with Matt Tomlinson), China’s Heritage through History (Routledge, 2024), Heritage Tourism (Cambridge, 2021), Heritage Politics in China (Routledge, 2020, with Christina Maags), and Heritage Romantic Consumption in China (Amsterdam, 2018). His research has been recognised with Best Paper awards from leading academic bodies, including the International Sociology Association RC50.

He is currently Chief Investigator of the ARC Discovery Project Memory Politics in Modern China (2023–2025), Lead Investigator of a UNESCO-funded project on Museums as Transnational Heritage Hubs (2025) focusing on networks of civilian war victims, and Partner Investigator on the Global Humanities Institute project Indigenous Mobilities, Tourism, and Racial Capitalism (2024–2026). His projects have secured competitive funding from major institutions including the Australian Research Council (ARC), UNESCO, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the European Union, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.