Her main research areas include various forms of migration and mobility between the People’s Republic of China and Europe, as well as the emplacement of migrants in Slovenia and the intersections between migration and heritage-making. She pays particular attention to research on so-called Global China, focusing on the circulation of people, ideas, and materialities between China and Europe.

Methodologically, she primarily uses ethnographic methods, which she complements with the study of archival sources and media. She also participates in developing new methods, such as the “walking seminar” method. She conducts research both in Europe and in China.

Martina currently leads the working group on migration and labour within the China in Europe Research Network (CHERN). She is also a visiting researcher at University College London (Department of European and International Social and Political Studies; 2025–2027), and at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (Department of China Studies; 2025–2027) in China. Together with Nataša Rogelja Caf, she is a section co-editor for the online publication Oxford Intersections — the Heritage, Culture and Knowledge collection, section Migrancy and Heritage — published by Oxford University Press. She is also co-editor of the professional bulletin Heriskop, which publishes texts in the field of critical heritage studies.

BOFULIN, Martina, KALC, Aleksej. (Forthcoming in 2026). Chinese Peddlers in the Late Habsburg Empire: Movements and Localities of the Early Transnationals.

KALC, Aleksej, BOFULIN, Martina. (Forthcoming in 2026). Peddling in the Austrian Lands: The Case of Chinese Peddlers at the Beginning of the 20th Century. Contributions to Contemporary History.

ROGELJA, Igor, BOFULIN, Martina. 2026. “The internationalisation of socialist enterprises: the convergent legacies, divergent developments and (un)surprising encounters.” In Anastas Vangelis and Dragan Pavličević, eds., Yugoslavia and China: Histories, Legacies, Afterlives. Routledge.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2025. “Local diaspora engagement and emigration as a cultural resource: the case of a Europe-bound sending area in Southeast China.” In Mette Thunø and Wang Simeng, eds., Handbook of Chinese Migration to Europe. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 297–323. Brill Handbooks of Chinese Overseas, vol. 1.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2024. “Three’s a crowd? Language assistance in mental healthcare settings in Slovenia.” Dve domovini / Two Homelands 60(2), 69–89.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2022. “Qiaoxiang 2.0: PRC and diaspora governance at the local level.” China Perspectives, issue 131, 7–15. DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.14313.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2022. “Heritagization of Chinese migration: from binaries to connections.” Asian Studies, print ed., vol. 10(26), issue 2, 385–396. ISSN 2232-5131. DOI: 10.4312/as.2022.10.2.385-396.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2021. “Imported commodity city: a new model for the development of China’s emigration hometowns?” Anthropological Notebooks, online ed., vol. 27, issue 2, 1–19. ISSN 2232-3716. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5810722.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2021. “Chinese Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Global Dialogue, Magazine of the International Sociological Association, vol. 11, no. 1. Published in English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Hindi, Farsi, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Romanian.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2018. “Transnational Matchmaking: Marriage Practices of Chinese Migrants from Qingtian Living in Europe.” In Christian Groes and Nadine Fernandez, eds., Intimate Mobilities: Sexual Economies, Marriage and Migration in a Disparate World. London: Berghahn Books, 31–51.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2017. “Building memorials for a friend or a foe? Mobility and heritage dissonance amid China-Japan conflict.” Anthropological Notebooks, vol. 23, no. 3, 45–61.

BOFULIN, Martina, COATES, Jamie. 2017. “Bakugai! Explosive shopping and entangled Sino-Japanese mobilities.” AAA Anthropology News, January 2017.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2017. “Family-making in the transnational social field: the child-raising practices of Chinese migrants in Slovenia.” Journal of Chinese Overseas, vol. 13, no. 1, 94–118. DOI: 10.1163/17932548-12341345.

BOFULIN, Martina. 2016. Home Away from Home: Migration from the People’s Republic of China to Slovenia [Slovenian title: Daleč doma: migracije iz Ljudske republike Kitajske v Slovenijo], Migration Series, 25. Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU Publishing House. 242 pp.

• Migrants'emplacement at the micro-level: Restaurants as the contact zones (January 1, 2025 - December 31, 2027)
• Population Medicine and Sustainable Development: European Opportunities in collaborating with China to improving global health (international research project • January 1, 2023 - December 31, 2026)
• Chinese migrants in Southeast Europe: inclusion and exclusion at the beginning of the 21. century (USA - Slovenia bilateral research cooperation with Texas University at Austin) (bilateral project • July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2024)
• CHERN (international project • November 1, 2019 - November 7, 2023)
• Heritage on the margins: new perspectives on heritage and identity within and beyond national (research programme • January 1, 2019 - December 31, 2027)
• DRIM (Danube Region Information Platform for Economic Integration of Migrants) (international project • January 1, 2017 - June 30, 2019)
• Trans-making – Art / culture / economy to democratize society. Research in placemaking for alternative narratives (international research project • January 1, 2017 - December 31, 2020)

• Vice-President of the Slovenian Migration Institute at ZRC SAZU’s Scientific Council
• Member of CERPE — The China-Europe Research Platform on Chinese Migration to and Beyond Europe; CHERN — China in Europe Research Network; and ACHS — Association of Critical Heritage Studies.
• Member of the Working Group for the Implementation of the Scientific Research and Innovation Activities Act at ZRC SAZU (2024–2025).
• Committee member of The Monitoring committee for doctoral student Nik Obid, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, 2026.
• Committee member of The Monitoring committee for doctoral student Maja Maria Kosec, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, 2024.
• Committee member of The Committee for the assessment of the doctoral dissertation of Jelena Gledić, ZRC SAZU Postgraduate School, 2026.
• Committee member of The Committee for the assessment of the doctoral dissertation of Maja Maria Kosec, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, 2026.
• Committee member of The Tribunal for the assessment of the doctoral dissertation of Huaxin Wang, Ramon Llull University, 2023.
• o External examiner for the viva examination of Jolyon Fredrick Swindells, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, 2026.

• PhD Supervisor: o Ana Reberc, Laughing of the Masses: Phenomenon of Stand-Up Comedy in Slovenia (ZRC SAZU Postgraduate School).