你好…

I’m Ella, a writer and artist based in London. I’ve written cultural and political commentary for publications including the Guardian, Spectator and New Statesman. Topics include the perils of TikTok marketing and the virtues of Camille Paglia. My favourite thing to write about is Classic Hollywood (see my Garbo epitaph).

I’m due to graduate in September 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in Chinese and Linguistics from SOAS, University of London. This language background means I’m comfortable working with written sources in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese. My final-year dissertation was on Yu hai qing mo (1967), a little-known Hong Kong remake of Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945). I spent my year abroad studying in Taipei, and enjoy using my Mandarin skills to scope out the pop scene of 1970s Taiwan in my free time (for a taste, try this or this).

I also contribute data to Grambank, a comparative syntax project hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.