Dr Ye Liu is a Reader at the Department of International Development. Prior to King’s, she was a Senior Lecturer in International Education at Bath Spa University between 2013 and 2016, and was a lecturer of Contemporary Chinese Studies and Director of the BA programme in Chinese Studies at the University College Cork, Ireland from 2012 to 2013.

The recipient of early-career awards (the 2014 Junior Sociologist Prize by the Research Committee on Women in Society of the ISA and the 2014 SRHE Newer Researcher Award), Ye holds a PhD in Comparative Sociology from the Institute of Education, University of London (now UCL Institute of Education). 

Her work has been published in Work, Employment & Society, the British Journal of Sociology of Education, Comparative Education Review, Higher Education, and the Journal International Education and Development.

Outside academia, Ye has written for the Conversation, Foreign Affairs and the MUSE. Her research has featured in the Financial Times, the Guardian, BBC News, the Protocol, the ChinaFile, the Reuters News and the Times Higher Education. She has also appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, the BBC Why Factor, the National Committee of the US-China Relations Podcast and the China Changing Festival at the Southbank Centre.

Research

• Gender relations
• Work-family conflicts
• Demographic policies
• Education
• Social and political trust 

Ye’s research focuses on systems of inequality-how culture and policy reproduce education and gender inequalities in contemporary China. Her first book ‘Higher Education, Meritocracy and Inequality in China’ (Springer, 2016) explores educational policies and the notion of meritocracy intersect to reproduce socioeconomic, gender and geographical inequalities through China’s notorious gaokao selection.

She is currently writing a book manuscript about siblingless urban women from the one-child generation and on how patriarchy still holds those women back during their adult life course transitions to the labour market, marriage and motherhood.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 4YYD0004 Social and Political Analysis of Emerging Economies
• 5YYD0007 China and Development
• 6YYD0023 Education and Development 

PhD supervision

Ye welcomes doctoral proposals in the area of demographic policies, gender relations and education in China.

Principal supervisor:

• Hui Huang
• Rina Limoni
• Jiaqi Zeng

Further details

See Ye's research profile