Zhao Receives Top Prize For Dissertation on Rural Chinese Youth

Pengfei Zhao
Pengfei Zhao

Pengfei Zhao has been awarded top prize in the 2017 International Institute for Qualitative Methodology (IIQM) Dissertation Award — Ph.D. Level. Zhao received her Ph.D. in Inquiry Methodology in the department of Counseling and Educational Psychology in October 2017.

Zhao’s dissertation, “Changing Fate: The Cultural Revolution’s Rural Youth in Transition to Late-Socialist China,” is the first book-length study of rural Chinese youth’s experience during and immediately after the Cultural Revolution and tells a forgotten story of how the rural youth came of age during China’s massive social changes of the post/late-socialist transition. Dr. Phil Carspecken is her dissertation committee chair.

“I am very honored to be selected as the recipient of the IIQM dissertation award. It came as a big surprise.” Zhao said. “I also appreciate the financial support that the award offered, which will allow me to conduct additional follow-up research in China this coming summer and revise the dissertation into a book manuscript.”

Zhao currently teaches graduate research methodology courses for the School of Education, Indiana University-Bloomington. She also serves as one of the doctoral research consultants in the school.