People

The goal of the network is to create a space for academics & students from across the university whose research relates to China, to share their work & promote interdisciplinary collaboration.

The network has affiliated staff and students from across UCL. If you would like to be involved please email l ucy.stagg@ucl.ac.uk

Affiliated staff | Affiliated PhD students

Affiliated staff

Jennifer Bond (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): historian of modern China focusing on gender, Christianity, education and diplomacy in the early twentieth century.
Lizbeth Bullough (IOE - Learning & Leadership): equality of opportunity and factors which contribute to social inequalities in education. Conducted a Research Report to review publications written in English on Early Childhood Education in the People's Republic of China.
Wolfgang Drechsler (Innovation and Public Purpose): interested in Confucian Public Administration and Governance (with a special interest in Wang Anshi and in Max Weber) and Innovation Policy today.
Dorian Fuller (Archaeology): UK Director of the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (UCL-PKU).
Jin Gao (Information Studies): project lead of the Chinese Export Watercolours (CEW) project. Also part of the Chinese Iconography Thesaurus (CIT) project and the Provenance of Asian Collections (PAC) project in collaboration with the V&A Museum.
Yuemei Ji (Slavonic and East European Studies): research is related to the Chinese economy, especially its financial development and debt problems.
Evelyn Kim (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): the historical development of student happiness and well-being policies in East Asia, specifically China.
Alison Lamont (IOE SRI – Thomas Coram Research Unit): her doctoral work explored how the Chinese state coordinated and understood welfare support for parents and spouses bereaved of children and/or partners during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. She is currently exploring the position of single women (both in the PRC and the UK, in different projects).
Handi Li (Political Science): focuses on information politics and state-society relationships in autocracies.
Maurizio Marinelli (Institute for Global Prosperity): research at the crossroads of history, geography, politics, and society, with a specialisation in Global China and urban studies.
Jing Meng (Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction): climate change policies, technological innovation, environmental sustainability, with a focus on China
Zhifu Mi (Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction): researching carbon footprints, pollution and climate change in China.
Michael Plouffe (Political Science): examining the ways in which private actors and governments engage in a global economy, with a particular focus on East Asia. Also the effects of China’s growing influence in global politics.
Nora Yitong Qiu (History) is an historian of modern East Asia, with a predominant focus on the period between 1600 to 2000.
Sangaralingam Ramesh (School of Slavonic and East European Studies): Global Economics, including China.
Igor Rogelja (European & Intl Social & Political Studies): works on the politics of infrastructure, looking at how grounded, field-work based research can help us understand 'global China' better. An editor at the People's Map of Global China.
Anastasiia Rudkovska (European & Intl Social & Political Studies): China and sustainable development
Alessandro Spano (Laws): Co-Director of the UCL China Centre for Politics, Law and Culture.
Shengxi (Eric) Xin (Bartlett School of Planning): researching socio-spatial governance and planning in China, particularly focusing on the rural development and community governance.
Fangzhu Zhang (Bartlett School of Planning): main interest is on urban development and environmental governance in China. Editor-in-chief of Transactions in Planning and Urban Research, a platform for diverse new inquiries and dialogues on the urban and regional development and planning processes in China.
Le-Yin Zhang (Development Planning Unit): researching the management of city economies, low-carbon transitions, and green and municipal finance, using China as a case study thanks to its significance in these areas.
Peng Zhang (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): international students' cross-border mobility and the educational experiences of second-generation Chinese migrants in the UK.
Yan Zhu (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): works on Chinese children’s everyday lives and personal relationships, and ethics in research and practices with children and young people in China.

Affiliated PhD students

Penny Barrett (History): Traditional, complementary and integrative medicine.
Xiaoxue Chen (Geography): the Chinese educated young people's changing relationship to work and their counter-urbanisation in the post-pandemic era.
Rachel Chua (History): gender history of late imperial China, stretching broadly into the Republican period
Ruiqi Deng (IOE - Social Research Institute): child gifting-giving practices in rural China.
Jiashuo (Gasol) Ding (History): tbc
Ruilin Ding (SELCS-CMII): examines the translation history of Chinese texts into Swahili during the 1960s and 1970s.
Yichao Du (Anthropology): intersections of Digital Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies. Also work on urban migration and rural development in China.
Kaidong Guo (Social Research Institute): long-term, often invisible impacts of slow violence on the dynamics of Chinese left behind (liushou) families.
Yu-Chun Kan (Institute of Archaeology): investigating ancient foodways in Northern China through archaeobotany and SEM microscopy. Also, exploring the history of East Asian archaeology within broader socio-political contexts.
Neil Li (IOE - Learning & Leadership): explores the experiences of Chinese students studying abroad (both historical and contemporary)
Ran Li (Institute of Global Health): health system issues, particularly the effective utilization of healthcare resources in China, especially for the aging population.
Xiaolin Li (Anthropology): tbc
Zehao Li (Institute of Archaeology): Creating a computational comparative model of linear defense system across Eurasia, including the Great Wall of China, mainly using spatial analysis and GIS modelling of archaeological remains.
Ziqi Li (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): Hong Kong hybrid international schools in China Guangdong area and the perception of parents and students.
Xin Lin (Institute of Archaeology): Jade in Mesoamerica and Early China
Jianqing Lin (School of Slavonic and East European Studies): Digitalization policies and sustainable development: a comparative analysis of Europe and China from macro to mezzo perspectives.
Cecilia Siyi Liu (Advanced Spatial Analysis): Focuses on China’s Greater Bay Area Smart City-Regionalism process, examining how digitalization transform the regional city-networking
Lang Liu (Political Science): the impact of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative policy on foreign public opinions.
Hanzhi Luo (Geography): Chinese migrant workers friendships in an industrial district in Hunan Province.
Colin Zhongping Mao (History of Art): examines the evolution of Chinese Socialist Realism from 1979 to 2019, with a particular focus on time-based media—such as film, performance, and digital art.
Taixing Shen (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): the role of higher education in the development of China’ s Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area
Haoyue Tan (Social Research Institute): the continuities and changes in the culture and practices of contemporary Chinese fatherhood.
Xiangchu Tang (Science and Technology Studies): social understanding of risks of longevity and guanxi practice (online and offline) in modern China.
Melike Toprak (Development Planning Unit): focuses on Chinese construction companies’ housing investments in Nairobi and explores how these companies interact with Kenyan institutions and actors.
Yun Wang (IOE - Social Research Institute): focuses on Chinese urban dual-earner families with pre-kindergarten child(ren), looking into the impact of intergenerational contract, China's family welfare system, gender division of labour, care relationalities, and commercialised childcare services on organisation of domestic labour.
Deborah Woolf (History): practicing acupuncturist and teacher in Chinese Medicine and philosophy. Currently researching the Tang interpolated chapters of the Huangdi Neijing.
Mengci Xiao (Bartlett School of Planning): researching urban conservation discourse via a lens of public participation in China. Also issues of post-growth planning, and cultural tourism in China.
Ying Yang (Institute of Archaeology): wood resource utilisation in the mausoleum of China's first emperor - Qin Shi Huang
Min You (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): history of female education in East Asia
Yawei You (Institute of Archaeology): impact of climate change on archaeological sites in China and surrounding areas
Yuqi Zhang (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): educational inequality, social mobility, and market transition in China
Yu Zhuang (Institute of Archaeology): history of archaeological fieldwork in late modern Egypt and China c. 1894–1939. Also, broader history of Chinese archaeology and modern Chinese society
Zixi Zuo (IOE - Education, Practice & Society): Chinese young people’s mediated intimacy against the backdrop of neoliberalist culture. Uses a pluralistic approach to engage with the complexities and ambivalences of young people’s reconfiguration of gender in everyday life during the covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan China.