Professor Yang Hu

Research Interests

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Yang Hu's research focuses on changing work, family, intimate and gender relations, as well as their intersection with population mobility, in a global context. His research contributes to advancing work-family, gender and social equality, and understanding of how macro socio-economic, political and institutional developments and cultural changes (re)configure everyday work, family and intimate lives. His research has been funded by the UKRI/ESRC, SSHRC, British Academy, HEFCE, and the Nuffield Foundation.

Yang's areas of research interest include:

1. (Changing) gender and work-family dynamics in regional and global contexts

The first strand of Yang’s research focuses on work-family, intimate, and gender relations over the life course in regional (Asia, MENA countries, South America, Canada, the USA, and the UK) and particularly in cross-national contexts. In his recent collaborative project funded by the URKI, Yang examines the role played by Artificial Intelligence in (re)producing intersecting gender and ethnic inequalities in the labour market in the UK and Canada. At Lancaster, Yang co-founded and co-convenes (with J. Fledderjohann) the LAARG (Lancaster Asia Area Research Group).

2. Mobilities and family relations in a global context

The second strand of Yang’s research focuses on population mobilities and family relations in a global context. For example, Yang's first book examined how people negotiate gendered family lives in Chinese-British inter-ethnic marriages. His recent work also examines the commercialisation of border regimes and re-theorises transnationalism in a (post-)COVID world.

3. COVID-19 and social inequalities

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yang has been active in researching social inequalities emerging from and exacerbated by the pandemic.

Yang is an editorial board member of Sociology (2020–), Journal of Marriage and Family (2020–), and Sociology Compass (2020–2022).

Yang's research has received broad global media coverage by outlets such as The Time Magazine, Newsweek, United Press, Global Times, German National Radio (see Yang's website for a full list).

At Lancaster, Yang is also affiliated with:

• Centre for Child and Family Justice Research
• Data Science Institute
• Centre for Gender and Women's Studies
• Centre for Mobilities Research and the Migrancy Research Group
• Lancaster University China Centre