Yujie Zhu is an anthropologist whose research advances critical and interdisciplinary approaches to heritage, memory, and social transformation. Trained at Heidelberg University (PhD), his work examines how heritage and narratives of the past are produced, contested, and institutionalised as political and ethical forces shaping governance, identity, and state–society relations across diverse cultural and geopolitical contexts.

His scholarship makes a sustained conceptual contribution to rethinking heritage and memory beyond nation-centred and classificatory frameworks. Drawing on anthropological theory and ethnographic research, he advances relational, transnational, and transcultural approaches that foreground movement, mediation, and ethical engagement across borders. Empirically, his work 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. Through these domains, he develops heritage as a critical analytical lens for understanding how historical violence, cultural authority, and moral claims are negotiated in contemporary societies shaped by colonial legacies, geopolitical tension, and historical violence.

Yujie is the author of five books and the co-editor of four edited volumes and four special issues, and has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and policy reports. His work has received more than 2,500 citations (Google Scholar; H-index: 22) and has been recognised with Best Paper awards from leading international bodies, including the International Sociological Association (RC50). His recent books include Making Places Sacred (Cambridge University Press, 2025, with Matt Tomlinson), China’s Heritage through History (Routledge, 2024), Heritage Tourism (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Heritage Politics in China (Routledge, 2020, with Christina Maags), and Heritage Romantic Consumption in China (Amsterdam University Press, 2018).

He currently serves as Chief Investigator of the ARC Discovery Project Memory Politics in Modern China (2023–2026) and Lead Investigator of the UNESCO-funded project Museums as Transnational Heritage Hubs (2025–2028), conducted in partnership with Yale University and Duke Kunshan University. The project examines transnational networks of civilian memory and the role of museums and heritage in processes of recognition, interpretation, and reconciliation in post-conflict contexts. He is also a Partner Investigator on the Global Humanities Institute project Indigenous Mobilities, Tourism, and Racial Capitalism (2024–2026), involving collaboration with the University of Minnesota and Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán. Collectively, his research has attracted competitive funding from 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.