Xiao is a linguistic anthropology PhD candidate working with (agro-)pastoralists in Amdo Tibet. She looks at how (agro-)herders transform their ecological expertise in spatial orientation, environmental perception, analytical reasoning, and affective attunement into conservation expertise while participating in China's citizen science and plateau conservation. She attends to intersectional asymmetries or injustice to marginal populations in China's recent turn to global ecological conservation. Additionally, she has a side project in Namibia and South Africa looking at the gendered and racialized histories and presence of the culling and conservation of cape fur seals.