Assistant Professor, Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge

Yunan Xu is an assistant professor of China and Global Development at the Centre of Development Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS). Before joining the University of Cambridge, she was a postdoctoral researcher working on an ERC Advanced Grant project (RRUSHES-5) at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. She was also previously a postdoctoral researcher at Singapore Management University in Singapore. She holds a PhD in development studies from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Yunan’s research centres on China-global interconnections, particularly in agri-food transformation. Her research interests include food politics, land politics, the agrochemical complex, rural transformation, the land and labour nexus, livelihood changes, and state-society interaction.

Yunan’s doctoral research studied the dynamics of the rise of industrial tree plantations in southern China through a critical political economy and political ecology framework. Her study put the logic of global capital front and centre, demonstrating the complicated role of China in the global land rush.

During her post-doctoral work, Yunan contributed to an ERC Advanced Grant project (RRUSHES-5), studying the global land rush and how it shapes and is shaped by five spheres of social life (food, climate change, geopolitics, labour, and nation-state/citizenship) across seven countries, including Ethiopia, Mozambique, Colombia, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and China. Currently, she is exploring the agrochemical complex through a China-global interconnection lens.