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The Childhood, Law & Policy Network (CLPN)

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Dr Zhaoxi Zheng

Zhaoxi

Postdoctoral fellow, UNSW Sydney, Australia

Email: zhaoxi.zheng@unsw.edu.au

Profile

Dr Zhaoxi Zheng is a sociologist, thanatologist, and an award-winning university educator. His doctoral research used a suite of innovative art-based, child-led, and post-qualitative approaches to explore young children's everyday encounters with death and dying. Zhaoxi is a Postdoctoral fellow at the School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney and his current research investigates carers' experiences and challenges when transitioning out of caring roles. Zhaoxi is Co-Lead at The Care Lab (UNSW), Co-Director at SocioHealthLab (UQ), and national co-convenor for The Australian Sociological Association Health Thematic Group. He is an Honorary Fellow at UQ School of Social Sciences and holds fellowship at the Higher Education Academy (HEA).

Research

Publications

Zheng, Z., Olson, RE., and Staton, S. (2025). Improvising End-of-Life: Children’s Intra-actions with Death and Dying. Mortality, 536-556. https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2025.2451078

Zheng, Z., Olson, R. E., Staton, S., & Setchell, J. (2025). (Un-)Protocoling post-qualitative childhood research: a novice researcher. Children’s Geographies, 34-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2025.2454576

Zheng, Z. (2023). Everything About Children, Death, and Ethics All at Once. International Review of Qualitative Research 16(2), 163-175. https://doi.org/10.1177/19408447221149491

Zheng, Z., Olson, RE., and Staton, S. (2026). Death-Emotions: The Why, Whether, and Where of Researching Death with Young Children. In Khyati, T. & Lamond IR. (Eds.), International Critical Autoethnographic Perspectives on Death: Researcher and Practitioner Insights. Palgrave Macmillan.

Zheng, Z. and Olson, RE. (2023). How Are Normative Deaths Celebrated, Reinforced, or Disrupted in Children’s Media? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Coco and Soul. In Coleclough, S., Michael-Fox, B., & Visser, R. (Eds.), Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture (pp. 115-131). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Olson, RE. and Zheng, Z. (2023). Death and dying. In Dew, K. & Donovan, S. (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of Health Research in the Social Sciences (pp. 77-81). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Expertise

Sociology of health and illness; Sociology of Childhood; Death, dying, end-of-life studies; Care and caring; Post qualitative methods
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