Her research focus on history of twentieth-century China, specializing in the intellectual, socio-cultural, and transnational history of grassroots politics, movements, and nation-building. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include common core course China in the world, history of pre-modern and modern China, and internationalization of modern China, as well as senior seminar of Global China Studies major. Dr. Zhu is also a recipient of an Apereo Atlas Teaching Award for his work on the DKU core course China in the World and a recipient of the Excellent Mentorship Award of Center of Contemporary China Studies at DKU. She is also the PI of the research lab—(post)modernity and China, which focuses on the comparative and transnational histories and theories of modernity and has published a special issue on China’s modernization since the 19th century.

She has co-edited and published two special issues in leading academic journals including Villages Make the City: Displacement, Dispossession, and Class in China’s Urban Villages (positions: asia critique) and The Modern Questions: China and Beyond, (Journal of Chinese History Review). She also published peer-reviewed articles in leading journals in Chinese history and Asian studies including China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies, International Journal of Asian Studies, and International Journal of Gender and Women's Studies. Her first book is “Everyday Leftism, Mass Democracy, and National Salvation in Republican China, 1919-1946,” currently under review. Her second book project is on China’s grassroot and state community-building and housing projects in the Republican era. She serves as book and article manuscript reviewer for Routledge, Leiden, positions: asia critique, and Twentieth-Century China, and The Journal of Chinese History and has been a longstanding member of several esteemed academic organizations, including the American Historical Association (AHA), the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), the World History Association (WHA), ASIANetwork, and the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS).

Zhu has a B.A. and M.A in history from Shandong University, China, and a Ph.D from University of New York. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was assistant professor of Asian history and Chinese at Wabash College and a Global Fellow at NYU-Shanghai.