The LUCC directorate develops key centre initiatives, coordinates research, facilitates collaboration, and develops strategic initiatives for the centre.
LUCC Director
Contact details: a.chubb@lancaster.ac.uk
Andrew studies Chinese politics and international relations, with a focus on crisis management, public opinion, and maritime disputes. As LUCC Director, Andrew contributes overall strategic direction, resource planning, and relations with other institutions within the university and externally.
Dr Andrew Chubb
Education and Research Lead
Contact details: d.hird@lancaster.ac.uk
Derek Hird's research principally concerns gender and class in contemporary China, with a particular focus on middle-class masculinities. As a member of the LUCC Directorate, Dr. Hird's work facilitates LU undergraduate and postgraduate students' engagement with LUCC activities, including through Translation Internships and the Doctoral Fellows program.
Dr Derek Hird
Academic Liaison Lead
Contact details: lingxuan.liu@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Liu is an expert on China’s environmental management and policies based on a multi-level governance system, and looks into challenges and opportunities of sustainable supply chain management. As Academic Liaison Lead, Dr Liu facilitates visiting scholars from China to connect with relevant LU academics, and facilitates funding opportunities for China-related research.
Dr Lingxuan Liu
Engagement Lead
Contact details: rebecca.liu@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr. Rebecca Liu's research interests are interdisciplinary, focusing on innovation, cross-cultural study, cooperation and networking, knowledge management and learning, and SME engagement in China. As Engagement Lead, Dr Liu brings LUCC's activities and the work of its affiliated scholars to the attention of internal and external stakeholders and the public.
Dr Rebecca Liu
Research Lead
Contact details: p.major@lancaster.ac.uk
Philippe Major's work focuses on modern Chinese philosophy. As research lead, Philippe contributes to the fostering and dissemination of research between members of the China Centre, Lancaster University researchers, and UK-based and international researchers.
Dr Philippe Major
Interdisciplinarity Lead
Contact details: d.tyfield@lancaster.ac.uk
David Tyfield's research focuses on the complex systems of processes of knowledge production and their interaction with issues of global cultural political economy, especially regarding critical analysis of the emergence of a globalised "knowledge-based" economy, climate change and the rise of China. As part of the LUCC Directorate, Prof. Tyfield draws together China-engaged LU researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds to facilitate the Centre's cross-disciplinary initiatives.
Prof David TYFIELDLUCC’s Fellows are researchers working on, in or with China and the Sinophone world. They provide a wide range of specialised expertise and broad experience in China-related research across all disciplines.
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 595176, r.apsimon@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Apsimon is an expert in particle beam dynamics and accelerating devices, with applications in healthcare and environmental sustainability, including in China. He is a member of the Lancaster University flying faculty, teaching at the joint campus with Beijing Jiaotong University in Weihai, China.
Dr Robert Apsimon
Contact details: c.baker@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Baker is interested in the cultural impact of China-Africa relations in sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr Charlotte Baker
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 593431, jocelyn.cunningham@lancaster.ac.uk
Jocelyn Cunningham is a national cultural leader in innovative artistic practice and partnerships between academic disciplines and the arts. Lancaster Arts is an arts centre based at Lancaster University with a renowned reputation for cutting edge artistic excellence.
Jocelyn Cunningham
Contact details: t.douglas@lancaster.ac.uk
Timothy is a Senior Lecturer in Bio-Chemical Engineering in the Engineering Department at Lancaster University. He studies biomaterials for biomedical applications, and the promotion of multilingualism in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Dr Timothy Douglas
Contact details: b.duan@lancaster.ac.uk
Baihui is an environmental historian, focusing on the history of war, environment, climate, animals, disease, medicine, and governance in East Asia, roughly from the late sixteenth century to modern period.
Dr Baihui Duan
Contact details: a.hesketh@lancaster.ac.uk
Ant Hesketh's research explores how we understand value beyond the quantum form. Based in the LU Management School's Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, he is interested in how Chinese artistic and philosophical thinking might facilitate a deeper understanding of value-capturing processes in organizations, and how this might be extended to greater inclusivity in understanding the value of firms.
Dr. Anthony Hesketh
Contact details: k.c.jones@lancaster.ac.uk
Prof Jones is an expert on China’s environmental quality, with interests in water, air and soil pollution, China’s role as a manufacturer and user of chemicals, environmental regulation and the links between environment and health.
Professor Kevin Jones
Contact details: h.kawanami@lancaster.ac.uk
Prof Kawanami is an expert on Myanmar’s relations with the world, Chinese-Myanmar borderland, Buddhist monastic communities and international network of Buddhist nuns, cultural exchange and civil society.
Dr Hiroko Kawanami
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 592205, eva.li@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Eva Li (李卓賢博士) specialises in Chinese-language media and cultural politics. Her research interests include audience participation, fandom, and gender and sexual politics in East Asian Sinophone societies.
Dr Eva Li
Contact details: o.lin@lancaster.ac.uk
Ou joined the Lancaster Law School as a Lecturer in Employment Law in September 2023. She is particularly interested in the regulation of platform work and other precarious employment relations. In addition to doctrinal analysis of the law, she embraces socio-legal methods to observe the interactions between law and the real world. Ou's doctoral thesis examines 'Workers' Spontaneous Struggles and Resistance in the Chinese On-Demand Economy'.
Dr Ou LIN
Contact Details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 510622, c.longman@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Longman is interested in exploring issues relating to transnational partnerships in higher education,and differences in cultures of learning and teaching. He also has an academicbackground in the field of language politics and Identity construction.
Contact details: judith.mottram@lancaster.ac.uk
Professor Mottram is an expert on colour use and understanding in global marketplaces.
Professor Judith Mottram
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 594419, k.mukherjee1@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr. Kunal Mukherjee has an interest in ethnic minorities and religious identity in contemporary China especially in Xinjiang and Tibet. He is also interested in China’s relations with South Asia especially India,and how China’s relationship with India has evolved since the 1962 war.
Dr Kunal Mukherjee
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 510518, s.pollastri@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Serena Pollastri is a designer and a lecturer who uses practice as an essential part of research and teaching.
Dr Serena Pollastri
Contact details: p.j.sewell@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Sewell is a Careers Coach (Consultancy) in the Lancaster University Management School An expert on graduate Employability and Entrepreneurship education known for the‘CareerEDGE model of Graduate Employability, Peter has worked with individuals,organizations and businesses across China and elsewhere in the world.
Dr Peter Sewell
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 594715, a.sweetman@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Sweetman is an expert in assessing the sources, fate and behaviour of persistent chemicals in the environment and quantifying their risks to humans and wildlife in China and elsewhere.
Dr Andrew Sweetman
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 595112, v.tantucci@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Tantucci is an expert of Chinese language and linguistics. His research addresses both diachronic phenomena of language change and applied issues of intercultural communication, addressed through mix methods of corpus-based and machine-learning analysis.
Dr Vittorio Tantucci
Contact details: y.tao4@lancaster.ac.uk
A Senior Research Associated with the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion (PPR), Yingnian is interested in corpus-based social media discourse analysis. Her work has explored interruptions (overlapping speech) in everyday and institutional settings in Chinese, and apologies on social media in China. She is currently working on the University’s race equality surveys, using a mixed-method approach.
Dr Yingnian Tao
Contact details: e.tarim@lancaster.ac.uk
Emre Tarim is a lecturer in behavioural sciences interested in the Chinese financial system and investor behaviours, and China's political economy of energy transitions.
Emre Tarim
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 594871, o.wild@lancaster.ac.uk
Prof Wild is an atmospheric scientist with expertise in atmospheric composition, urban air quality and climate change, and has a particular interest in China’s impacts on local, regional and global air quality.
Professor Oliver Wild
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1524 592222, r.j.young@lancaster.ac.uk
Prof Young’s group is developing technologies for secure communications and anti-counterfeiting.
Professor Robert Young
Contact details: l.zhou11@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Zhou is Confucius Institute Teaching Lead and Lecturer in Chinese at the Department of Languages and Cultures (DeLC) at Lancaster University. Jocelin’s research investigates language policy and campaigns in China from the prospective of sociolinguistics and political science.
Jocelin Lingxia ZHOU
Contact details: sharon.zheng@lancaster.ac.uk
Sharon's research areas cross over popular culture (e.g. audience/ fan/ consumer/ celebrity culture), gender studies (e.g. feminism and motherhood), British/Chinese TV and media ecosystem/landscape. I also show interest in media and cultural policy, social and digital media studies in China particularly.
Dr Sharon ZhengLUCC Non-Resident Fellows include researchers working with Lancaster University colleagues on China-related research, as well as current and former visiting scholars at the centre.
Prof Hu is an Associate Professor in Sociology at UCL Social Research Institute. An expert on how China’s social, cultural, political and institutional changes shape population change and mobility, gender and family relations , and social (in)equalities, Yang's research draws on the analysis of large-scale quantitative data as well as in-depth qualitative evidence.
Prof Fanwei Kong is a Professor in the School of International Relations at Tianjin Foreign Studies University. He was a Visiting Scholar in 2019-2020, working on China-EU investment issues.
Contact details: yunyanliemail@gmail.com
Yunyan Li is a social policy and mixed-methods researcher with research interests in social and public policy, gender and family, and East Asian welfare. Yunyan's recent research project investigates the recalibration of the institutional arrangements in socio-economic reform and the welfare system in rural and urban China and its impacts on women under the interaction between modernisation and transforming Confucianism.
Dr Yan LIU of the Institute of Development Studies, Yunnan University, studies how regional differences affect China's urbanization processes. As a LUCC Visiting Scholar in 2019-2020, Dr Liu examined the case of Yunnan Province, an underdeveloped province in western China with plateau geographical features, and specifically how its economic development level and geographical features affect the spatial relationship between urban and rural areas as well as the rural-urban factor flows.
LUCC Founding Director
Professor Nordin is Lau Chair of Chinese International Relations at Kings College London. Professor Nordin is an expert on how China’s relations with the world are negotiated through Chinese foreign and domestic policy, academia, propaganda, online dissidence, and artistic expression. As Founding Director, Professor Nordin continues to support LUCC’s overall operations, strategy, and leadership.
Dr Xiaodan Qiu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese (Zhuhai) at Sun Yat-sen University, China. She works on Confucianism, modern Chinese literature, digital humanities and creative writing, and was a Visiting Scholar from 2024 to 2025.
Dr Aiqing Wang a Senior Lecturer and the Subject Lead for Chinese at the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at Liverpool University. Dr Wang's research investigates Chinese cultural studies, pragmatics, historical linguistics and translation studies, with particular expertise on Classical Chinese syntax.
Dr. Nick Wong is an applied linguist and Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). His work has examined the non-standard writing practices used by Hongkongers within the theoretical framework of translanguaging, and he is also the founder of “Kongish Daily” and the notion of “Kongish”.
Zoe Zhu is a business ethnographer interested in the institutionalization and internalization of culture in the organization, particularly how employees interpret organizational culture and related interactions between management and employees. She is a Senior Lecturer in the School of East Asian Studies at Sheffield University.
LUCC has a number of doctoral researchers, who are funded or supervised through the centre. You can find more information about how to undertake your doctoral research through LUCC here.
Contact details: x.bai6@lancaster.ac.uk
Xue Bai is a PhD student in Politics, Philosophy and Religion. She is interested in exploring the political consumption in China and motivations behind Chinese citizens’ political consumption behaviours.
Contact: f.ceccato@lancaster.ac.uk
Francesca Ceccato is a doctoral researcher in Languages and Cultures. Her field of study belongs to gender, sexuality and women’s studies in contemporary China. Specifically, the focus of her research is on Chinese leftover women.
Contact details: l.r.dixon@lancaster.ac.uk
Luke Dixon is a doctoral researcher at Lancaster University, investigating the influence of Belt and Road Initiative investments on urban development in West African states, with a particular focus on how these initiatives interact with local governance structures and produce divergent outcomes in democratic and non-democratic regimes.
Contact details: q.fan1@lancaster.ac.uk
Qin is a doctoral researcher in Linguistics and English Language. Her research project explores business discourse targeted at the high-end market in China, adopting Bourdieu’s conceptualization of taste and distinction. Her interests are in how added value in/around brands/products is constructed discursively, and how Chinese middle- and upper-class people are represented in business discourse.
Contact details: m.jiang9@lancaster.ac.uk
Mingya (Mia) Jiang is based in the Department of Languages and Cultures (DeLC), conducting research on the application of philosophical hermeneutics in translation studies and the interpretation of the Tao Te Ching.
Mingya (Mia) Jiang
Contact details: h.jing2@lancaster.ac.uk
Hui Jing is a postgraduate researcher in Educational Department. Hui is interested in the Gender Dynamics and Transcultural Practice in the Development of Chinese Urban Folk Dance.
Contact details: y.lei4@lancaster.ac.uk
Yuhong Lei is a PhD candidate in Educational Research. Her interests are in technology-enhanced learning and student engagement.
Contact details: j.li141@lancaster.ac.uk
Jinyuan Li is a PhD student in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, studying anti-corruption and moral/ideological discipline in China.
Contact details: l.li39@lancaster.ac.uk
Linchen Li is a PhD researcher in the Lancaster University Law School. Linchen is interested in tech transfer and the application of international rules, especially considering national security interests, and the evolution of intellectual property rights and related intangible property rights in modern society.
Contact details: r.li28@lancaster.ac.uk
Run LI is a PhD student in Linguistics at Lancaster University. His research interests are corpus linguistics, (multimodal) critical discourse studies, gender studies, media studies, and health communication.
Contact details: y.li108@lancaster.ac.uk
Yannan Li is a PhD student in the Politics, Philosophy and Religion Department. Yannan is interested in exploring issues relating to nationalism in contemporary China, especially the impact of China’s state nationalism on its internal affairs and policies.
Contact details: d.y.ng@lancaster.ac.uk
Desmond Ng Yong Sheng is a PhD researcher in the School of Global Affairs, focusing on Southeast Asian authoritarianism, right-wing politics, and hedging, particularly in Malaysia.
Contact details: r.qian1@lancaster.ac.uk
Rui Qian is a PhD student in Film at Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Art. Rui is interested in Chinese cinema studies, especially the images of Chinese migrant workers in films, and the representation of China’s modernization process on film screen.
Contact details: z.quan@lancaster.ac.uk
Artist and LICA PhD researcher Zi Quan's work is trying to find the image mode related to time, space and the universe in early Chinese history, and apply them to contemporary ink painting creations. Her personal website can be found at: https://www.artstation.com/ziquan1
Contact details: x.sun19@lancaster.ac.uk
Xiaoqi Kaydence Sun is a PhD candidate in Media and Cultural studies at Lancaster University's Department of Sociology. Kaydence's research focuses on lesbianism and queer-female-masculinities in contemporary China through academic pathways of sociology and cultural studies.
Contact details: p.tzanni@lancaster.ac.uk
Panagiota (Penny) Tzanni is a PhD student in Technology-Enhanced Learning and Eresearch. She interested in exploring how hybrid professional development can empower Chinese educators and help them integrate more technology in their teaching practice.
Contact details: t.wang15@lancaster.ac.uk
A PhD researcher in Educational Research, Tingjun Wang is interested in psychological interventions to support school students’ mental health and the integration of interventions into Chinese school contexts. Tingjun's main project investigates the application of mindfulness training to Chinese secondary schools, including the effectiveness of mindfulness training on students’ stress, emotion regulation and academic performance.
Tingjun Wang
Contact details: j.wu31@lancaster.ac.uk
Lily Wu researches feminism in contemporary China, especially digital feminism and popular feminism. She is also interested in youth studies, gender and education.
Lily Wu
Contact details: h.yang23@lancaster.ac.uk
Hao Yang is an art practice-based researcher and PhD student in the Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts. Hao's research uses the the Chinese Taoist allegory of ‘the happy excursion’ to compose a set of art practices as a method to explore the 'digital Leviathan' monopolising and manipulating the individual’s way of thinking, sensing and being.
Contact details: z.yang55@lancaster.ac.uk
Zikan (Tim) Yang's research interests are in the Buddhist epistemology and its emotion theories. Tim is also interested in its aesthetic domain.
Contact details: y.yin16@lancaster.ac.uk
Emma (Yue) Yin is a PhD student in Linguistics, specializing in corpus-based discourse analysis and discourse-historical Analysis of social media text and explore topics about language, gender and video games.
Contact details: l.zhang53@lancaster.ac.uk
Linxiao Zhang's research focuses on gender, sexuality, and education, with a particular interest in the experiences of Chinese students in UK higher education.
Contact details: s.zhang52@lancaster.ac.uk
Shu's research interests include land transaction market, rational distribution of natural resources and regulation of artificial intelligence in China. Her current research explores the role of Zeng Jian Gua Gou (增减挂钩) policy (the link between increase and decrease of land) in promoting the free flow of land in China's market and its improvement.
Contact details: x.zhang71@lancaster.ac.uk
Xiao specializes in conducting qualitative analysis on the synthesis of care and education in Chinese public early years settings and on and using child-inclusive methods to understand Chinese preschoolers’ caring agency.
Xiao ZHANG
Contact details: y.zhang130@lancaster.ac.uk
Yitian Zhang, based in the LU Law School, studies international human rights law and legal theory, and is writing a thesis on human rights with Chinese characteristics.
Yitian Zhang
Contact details: f.zhu@lancaster.ac.uk
Based in the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Noah Zhu has research interests in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) and social media discourse. Noah's expertise lies in the evaluation of data-driven learning, corpus analysis of social media discourse and Chinese-English translation benchmarking for geoheritage.
Noah Zhu
Contact details: j.zhu20@lancaster.ac.uk
Jiangye is a doctoral researcher in Educational Research at Lancaster University. Jiangye is a specialist in advancing higher education internationalisation and improving educational quality through innovative strategies and cross-cultural collaboration.
LUCC’s Visiting Scholars are academics from across all disciplines who working on, in or with China and the Sinophone world. For more information about how to join LUCC as a visiting scholar, see here.
Contact details: s.li74@lancaster.ac.uk
Shimin Li is an Associate Professor in the School of Marxism at Southwest Jiaotong University. As a Visiting Scholar in 2025-26, Dr Li is investigating the construction and dissemination of China’s image in the international public sphere, with a particular focus on the perspectives of the United Kingdom and Europe.
Contact details: s.zhu9@lancaster.ac.uk
Shangzhen Zhu is a LUCC Doctoral Fellow and Visiting PhD Researcher working on China’s discursive power in international organizations (especially the WTO), political discourse in China, discourse on Chinese social media, and platform feminism in China.
Contact details: g.zholzhanova@lancaster.ac.uk
Gulnara Zholzhanova is a Visiting Scholar in 2023-24, examining the conceptual foundations Kazakhstan-China relations. A graduate of the MA (Media and Journalism) program in the School of Arts and Culture at Newcastle University, Gulnara is a politics and law journalist with the newspaper Egemen Qazaqstan in Kazakhstan.
LUCC student affiliates work with LUCC scholars to provide research assistance, and work on their own research projects.
Daria Bogolyubova is a LUCC research consultant on global public opinion on China. A graduate of the BA International Relations at Lancaster University, she is currently pursuing an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford. In 2025 she was a visiting student at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, where she conducted research for her dissertation on China’s role as a mediator in the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Inés Sánchez Valer is a LUCC research consultant on global public opinion on China Having lived in two different cities in both northern and southern China, she brings first-hand cultural and regional insights to her work on. Her research explores the intersections between China's international engagement and Latin America. Inés holds an MA in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy from Lancaster University.
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