Welcome!

My name is Dr Lee-Shan Tse. I am a Cambridge-trained, publicly engaged anthropologist, artist, educator, and a new mother. As the founder of n-sphere, I welcome you.

From infancy onwards, my life has been shaped by migrations and the stories of my ancestors, intra-generation communication, miscommunication and unspoken histories. I was surprised to learn late in my life that I was gifted to write and think analytically. As a first-generation academic, I embarked upon the long PhD journey where I studied the stories, paths, and the many homes of my interlocutors in Hong Kong and South China over a time span of five decades.

The path to anthropology was natural to me, living as an insider and outsider, undergoing constant shifts, and being trained from childhood to listen attentively, to know what is expected: to perform, interpret, and conform - until later in my adult life, only after my PhD(!), when I created a space that was safe for me as an individual. Only then could I develop my Self; the voice, the ideas coming through my many life experiences and a decade of higher education.

Learning and unlearning, and re-learning, are all part of the many processes of discovering and understanding and learning the self.

Through the histories of generations, through the travels of migration and the search for home, I have been led to the creation of n-sphere - a home to create spaces for learning, teaching, publishing and the arts.

This learning space is for wayfarers, students, and life-long learners from all walks of life who appreciate beauty, love, empathy, solidarity and life.

In addition to the learning spaces, I offer 1:1 consultations (academic writing and coaching, academic-related applications into universities, navigating difficult space, four modules-related topics).

My professional projects

I am currently doing fieldwork in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

I am interested in bringing the voices from the unheard and unseen to be understood and seen. To bring knowledge that has been erased or dormant, back to the foreground.

My research interests include mirage, urban change, lived experiences, movements and homes, heritage and arts informed by Islam.

I am also passionate about the sacred arts, time, space, values, mirage and the other worlds.

• Anthropological Research, Leverhulme Trust, Queen’s University, Belfast

  Research Fellow

  ‘Heritage Literary in Muslim Communities of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area’

• Founder of N-Sphere, Ltd.

• Artist, Chinese Arabic Calligraphy

• Community organiser

• Undergraduate Supervision, Human, Social, and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge

Education

Evans Fellow, University of Cambridge, 2023-2025

PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 2017-2023

MPhil in Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 2016-2017

Double MA in Global Governance, University of Waterloo, 2015-2016

Double MA in International Politics and East Asia, University of Warwick, 2014-2015

BA in International Relations, University of Geneva, 2009-2012

Kantonsschule und Primarschule in the Swiss German part of Switzerland

Homes

Zurich - place of my socialisation, Swiss-German mandatory schooling system, citizenship, and current residence

Fuzhou - places of ancestral origin - place of my grandmother

Hong Kong - place of birth

Cambridge & Belfast - academic home

Bandung, Hijaz, New York - spiritual homes

Languages

German, Swiss-German - Chinese Cantonese, Fuzhounese, Mandarin - English

Working proficiency: French

Publications

Winkel, Eric and Tse, Lee-Shan. An Illustrated Guide to Ibn Arabi (second edition). London, Oceans Within, 2025.

Tse, Lee-Shan. “Ibn ‘Arabī and the Metaphysical Meanings of the Shadow Play in Java.” Tasavvuf Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Dergisi 4, no. 1 (2025): 143–54. doi:10.32739/ustad.2025.7.81.

Tse, Lee-Shan, and degree granting institution University of Cambridge. Department of Social Anthropology. “The Dualities of Home : Hong Kong Citizens in a Mobile World / Lee-Shan Tse.” Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Cambridge, 2023.

Mogstad, Heidi and Tse, Lee-Shan. Decolonizing Anthropology. Cambridge Anthropology, 36, no.2 (2018): pp. 53–72.