Yushan Xie is a Doctoral student in education and a Clarendon scholar at the University of Oxford. Her research is fully funded by the Clarendon Fund and Brasenose College.

Her research focuses on the self-formation of students of rural backgrounds in universities in China, against the backdrop of higher education massification, urbanisation and digitalisation.

Prior to Oxford, Yushan worked as a social entrepreneur in rural Hunan Province and educational policy researcher which enabled her to conduct health and education intervention research in the rural west of China, including Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces. She also gained professional experience in working as a youth culture researcher in a leading Chinese consulting firm.

Yushan completed her MPhil in Education from Cambridge University where she was awarded a ‘Best Dissertation Award’ from the Faculty and the ‘Special Commendation Award’ from the British Council ELT Master’s Dissertation Competition. She holds a BA in Translation from Nankai University in China during which she was awarded the National Scholarship from the Ministry of Education.

 

Publications

Xie, Y. & Liu. Y. (2021). Who do you hand out with? How Chinese students’ social networks relate to perceived oral proficiency gains during study abroad experiences. Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education, 6(1), 59-90.