Dr Yao's research examines how a rising Global China engages with the wider world, and how these encounters shape the norms, everyday experiences, and strategies of actors ranging from international organisations to Chinese students, diaspora communities, and companies abroad. Her work reflects critically on contested concepts such as Chineseness, globalisation, and identity, and on how their meanings are negotiated and challenged. She works across various research methods including large-scale surveys, experiments, ethnography, and arts-based co-creation, producing research that is analytically rigorous yet grounded in lived experiences.

As a diasporic Chinese woman scholar, she is committed to working with communities and across sectors to produce research with real-world impact. Her Co-creation with Chinese Communities project brings together diaspora communities, creatives, university services and policymakers to co-create knowledge and practical responses that improve support for Chinese communities in the UK.

A Recipient of the UKRI Shifting Global Polarities Fellowship, she previously served as Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Nonprofit Management Programme at the University of Hong Kong before joining King's College London.

Research

• Chinese political economy
• Diaspora politics and gender
• International organisations, norms and Global China 

As a political scientist, Yanran's research interests include civil society, Chinese politics, and globalisation. In particular, she is interested in exploring the interactions between civil society and authoritarianism, a regime type that is resurgent after several decades of global political liberalisation. Using case studies of mainland China and Hong Kong, she examines the accountability challenges facing civil society under authoritarian states and how the Chinese Communist Party exerts its overseas influence through Chinese civil society organisations.

Further details

See Yanran's research profile