Loretta Ieng-Tak Lou

Biography

I am an anthropologist whose research revolves around the moral landscapes of Chinese societies. Across my work on social movements, green and sustainable living, environmental politics, health, healing, and medicine, I examine how people embody ethical commitments, cultivate virtues, take responsibility, and negotiate moral dilemmas within particular social and institutional milieus.

What unites these projects is an enduring interest in world-building through self-cultivation: when can transforming the self become a means of transforming the world, and what are the limits of such projects? I am especially interested in what happens when ethical ideals encounter competing obligations and structural constraints, and when demands for self-transformation and personal responsibility risk individualising problems that are fundamentally social, political, or institutional.

I received my DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford. Before returning to Oxford, I taught Climate Change and the Anthropocene, Planetary Health, Critical Global Health, and Social Movements at Durham University.

Research Interests

Morality and ethics, especially environmental and medical ethics
Self-cultivation
Social movements and prefigurative politics
Green and sustainable living
Health, healing, and medicine
Spirituality and reenchantment
Engaged Buddhism and Humanistic Buddhism

Current Projects

I am working on two projects. The first examines medical ethics in Chinese societies. The second explores the ethics and politics of responsibility for health, with particular attention to self-care in integrative medicine, preventive medicine, and mental health.

Education

DPhil in Anthropology, University of Oxford

MSc by Research in Anthropology, University of Edinburgh

BA in Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle

Selected publications

Lou, L., (2025). Taking responsibility for one’s life. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. [online] Available at: https://medanthro.net/critical-care/taking-responsibility-for-ones-life/
Lou, L.I., (2025). Nationalism and the legitimacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Macau: Colonial legacy and contemporary imaginaries. In Therapy, Spirituality, and East Asian Imaginaries (pp. 277-298). Routledge.
Lou, L.I.T. and Lora-Wainwright, A.L., (2025). When sociality fails to produce solidarity: environmental NGOs and the politics of public engagement in contemporary China. BioSocieties, 20(4), pp.683-703.
Lou, L.I., 2023. Healing nature: spiritual ecology, self-cultivation, and social transformation in Hong Kong. Worldviews:Religions, Culture, and Ecology, 27(3), pp.189-209.
Lou, L.I., 2023. Preservation by demolition: Toxic heritage in contemporary China. In Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice (pp. 174-187). Routledge.
Lou, L.I.T., 2022. The art of unnoticing: Risk perception and contrived ignorance in China. American Ethnologist, 49(4), pp.580-594.
Lou, L.I., 2022. From hygienic modernity to green modernity: Two modes of modern living in Hong Kong. Design and Modernity in Asia: National Identity and Transnational Exchange 1945-1990, p.105.
Lou, L.I.T., 2019. Freedom as ethical practices: On the possibility of freedom through freeganism and freecycling in Hong Kong. Asian Anthropology, 18(4), pp.249-265.
Fabian, N. and Lou, L.I.T., 2019. The struggle for sustainable waste management in Hong Kong: 1950s–2010s. Worldwide Waste, 2(1), pp.10-10.

Doctoral Supervision

I welcome inquiries from prospective doctoral students.

Ruoyu Jia, Menstrual Governance in Socialist China (History, Durham University, co-supervised with Chris Courtney and Roslyn Malcolm)

Yumeng Liu, Psychotherapy for the Chinese: An ethnographic study of Imagery Communication Psychotherapy(Anthropology, Durham University, co-supervised with Liana Chase and Qing Cao)

Bohan Xiao, In Search of Freedom: Lifestyle-Migration to a Post-Industrial City in Contemporary China (Anthropology, Durham University, co-supervised with Felix Ringel)