About Xiaorong
Zinnia Xiaorong Wang is a researcher, curator, and writer whose work examines how emerging digital technologies reshape embodied modes of perception within cultural studies. She holds dual master’s degrees from Goldsmiths, University of London, and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (China). Her early career in dance involved extensive participation in national-level cultural exchange programmes, through which she received numerous national awards for dance performance. Her jewellery design work has received international recognition, including the HRD Design Awards (2020). She holds professional certifications including Project Management Professional (PMP) and Gemmological Institute of China (GIC), supported by over eight years of experience working on cultural projects.
Informed by an interdisciplinary background spanning dance and performance, jewellery and material culture studies, geosciences, human–computer interaction (HCI), and human factors engineering, her research traces embodied experience and knowledge across sensory, material, and computational dimensions, and in doing so contributes to scholarship on the technologically mediated conditions through which culture is experienced. Her curatorial practice includes Perception (2021, Koppel 540 Gallery, London), which examined embodied perception between materiality and immateriality; Through the Garden Gate (2023, Zhijian Gallery, Shanghai), a group exhibition of leading contemporary jewellery artists from both Eastern and Western contexts that explored the material and conceptual possibilities of craft through the theme of the garden, in which she participated as a curatorial assistant; Maize Maze: Immortality Experiment (2023, Copeland Gallery, London), which examined the impact of digital technologies on contemporary artistic practice; and GRID (2023, Copeland Gallery, London), a solo exhibition of works by Ran Zhou that addressed the complex relationships between idealised body standards, illness, and medical systems through video, installation, and performance. Her empirical research on factors affecting tacit knowledge transfer in mentoring programmes was published in Soft Science. Her survey-based research examined the micro-pathways of embodied sensorimotor experience in interpersonal interaction, grounded in the SECI model, and was published in Information Studies: Theory & Practice.
She is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Plymouth. Her current research focuses on immersive exhibition formats in post-digital curation, particularly in relation to virtual reality and multisensory audience engagement. She also serves as Chair of the Chinese Society at the University of Plymouth (2023–2025), where she has led the organisation and delivery of events promoting cultural diversity.
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