Qingling is a DPhil student in Higher Education and a Kwok Scholar.
Qingling’s research examines the enabling and hindrance factors in enhancing the quality of higher technical education in Africa for youth upskilling and empowerment. Her research interests encompass higher technical skills training, work-based learning, university-industry collaboration, employability, and entrepreneurship.
As a part-time learner, Qingling is a full-time practitioner in international development advancing inclusive and equitable quality higher education, with focuses on quality assurance, internationalization of higher education, skills development and youth empowerment.
Holding a Master in Public Policy Degree from Oxford (Kwok Scholar) and an MSc in Development Management (Lee Scholar) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Qingling has worked across developing contexts in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.
Pierre is using quasi-experimental quantitative methods to gauge the effects of participating in college and career pathway programs in Massachusetts, under the supervision of Ariel Lindorff and Steve Strand.
Originally from Les Cayes, Haiti, he most recently lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he was working as a Research Analyst at Harvard University and later as a Policy Analyst at the Massachusetts Department of Education.
Pierre earned a Bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University and Master’s degrees from the Ohio State University and Brown University, respectively.
Claire (郝煜) is a DPhil student in Applied Linguistics and a China Oxford Scholarship Fund (COSF) scholar.
Claire holds a BA in Education and Physics from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Applied Linguistics from UCL Institution of Education, and an EdM in International Education Policy from Harvard University. She is passionate about exploring and supporting the transnational experiences of bi-/multilingual students in studying abroad contexts. Her research and professional interests include bilingualism, language and identity, international education, professional development, and school leadership.
Since 2015, Claire has served as the Director of International Education at Beijing Xinxuedao Education Group, a non-profit organisation that operates 31 schools with over 30,000 K-12 students in China. She has also worked as a high school counsellor and a teacher of Physics and Psychology.
Publications
Hao, Y. and Lantsman, G. (2022). Motivation in MOOCs: a qualitative study on the design and evaluation of an online IELTS course. The 7th IAFOR International Conference on Education.
Hao, Y. (2020). Education without borders: sojourner trips in students’ holistic development. In Wang, J. (Ed.). Family, Society, and Education. Tsinghua University Press.
Hao, Y. (2020). Learning how to learn: the role of metacognition and self-regulation in learning. In Wang, J. (Ed.). The Virtue of Thinking in Learning. Tsinghua University Press.
Hao, Y. (2019). Chinese students at a UK university: how linguistic repertoire mediates language and sojourner identity construction. Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Conference. Beijing Normal University.
Preece, S., Griffin, A., Hao, Y. and Utemuratova, G. (2018). Examining Linguistic Diversity as a Resource for Higher Education in the Anglophone World. In Tong, V. C., Standen, A., & Sotiriou, M. (Ed.). Shaping Higher Education with Students: Ways to Connect Research and Teaching (pp.288-293). UCL Press.
Preece, S., Griffin, A., Hao, Y. and Utemuratova, G. (2016). Making the most of linguistic diversity: the views and practices of bi/multilingual postgraduate students. The Multilingual University. ESRC Seminars.
Hao, Y. (2012). A Transformative Journey: China-US exchange student studying at an American high school. New World Press.
Margo is a DPhil student in the Department of Education. Her research interests focus on professional and vocational education as well as social mobility and social inclusivity in the context of higher education.
Margo’s DPhil research aims to examine Master of Business Administration (MBAs) programs as a means of human capital acquisition, and potential links between generation of this type of capital and social mobility for MBA students. She wants to explore to what extent generation of human capital can lead to social movements for MBA participants, and how this may be impacted by various social inclusion and meritocratic factors.
Prior to her DPhil studies at Oxford, Margo received a first class Master’s degree (with honours) in Financial Management at the University of Warsaw, completed PGCE in Business Education at University College London, and a Master’s degree in Educational Assessment at the University of Oxford. She also spent 15 years working in investment banking where alongside her M&A work, she developed interests in professional education, on-the-job learning, and coaching.
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.
Lavinia’s doctoral research explores discourses on diversity in higher education and the university’s relation to social justice, particularly in the forms of institutional diversity work and student activism, e.g. student-led decolonisation movements in the UK. Taking on an ethnographic approach, she aims to map the objectives, strategies, paradigms and challenges that lie at the core of the activities pursued by the different groups of actors.
Prior to coming to Oxford, Lavinia studied Comparative Literature and Media Studies (BA) in Bonn and St Andrews and Intercultural Communication and Education (MA) in Cologne and at SOAS, London. During her master programme, she conducted a research project on the relation between diversity and knowledge production at SOAS and took part in the UNESCO World Heritage Research Class 2019/20, doing fieldwork on the formation of cultural identities in the UNESCO world heritage Laponia in northern Sweden. She also was a research assistant at the German Institute for Adult Education, Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning, and took part in the BMBF-funded meta-research project Digitisation in the education sector there. Moreover, she worked at the Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health (ceres) at the University of Cologne.
Renyu completed her BA degree in Psychology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) and her MPhil degree in Education at University of Cambridge.
During her MPhil study, she worked with children aged 4 to 6 years to investigate the relationship between bilingualism, vocabulary size, and inhibitory control, and also to validate a novel app designed to assess early language development. For her Dphil study at Oxford, Renyu aims to explore the factors that might affect L2 pronunciation learning in young children and the interaction between children’s L1 and L2. She is particularly interested in the psychological factors that might influence a child’s L2 pronunciation.
Prior to studying at Oxford, Renyu worked as Research Assistant at the Assessment Research Group at British Council for one year and a half. She was involved in various projects, including gap analysis on reading demand and reading ability, participant feedback questionnaire design and analysis, design and recruitment for a new EAP task study, etc.