Zixuan Yang is a DPhil student in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, supervised by Dr Jenny Wynn from the Department of Education and Professor Naomi Waltham-Smith from the Faculty of Music. Her research sits at the intersection of music education and environmental education, exploring how musical and nature-based practices can inspire alternative approaches to education. Drawing on the Chinese traditions of Hua’er (花儿) folk songs and the Forest School approach, she investigates how artistic and ecological ways of knowing can be integrated to reimagine culturally responsive and place-based educational experiences. Her work also attends to embodied and sonic relationships with more-than-human worlds and explores resonances between Chinese musical traditions and Nordic nature-based educational philosophies.
Prior to Oxford, Zixuan completed an MPhil in Education (Arts, Creativity and Education) at the University of Cambridge and an MA in Early Years Education at University College London. She has presented her work at international academic conferences and is passionate about building bridges between music, nature, and culture.