Shuyan is a doctoral student in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She has strong research interests in the sociocultural perspective of learning, teacher education and teaching English as a second language.

Her doctoral research explores the processes of professional learning and identity development with the aim of strengthening the quality and agency of teachers. She focuses on offering empirical evidence to understand how language teacher identity is embedded in discursive practices and how the societal, cultural and institutional issues are played out in teacher education.

Prior to her doctoral study, she has taught English as a foreign language in China and received her M.A. degree in English Education with distinction at the Institute of Education, University College London (UCL).