Research Interests

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Yang pursues two broad lines of research:

1. Family, work, and work-family inequalities in a global context, including the implications of artificial intelligence and digitalisation for work-family lives. Yang takes two approaches to the 'global' in his research – the first features a global comparative scope, and the second focuses on global mobilities.

2. Intersectional inequalities in crises (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters). Crises arise from and heighten multiple forms of interlocking social inequalities. Yang's research has examined, for example, the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for racial, migrant, age, and gender inequalities, as well as older people's intersectional needs in natural disasters.

Yang's research contributes to advancing work-family equity and justice. It advances our understanding of how macro socio-economic, political and institutional developments and cultural changes, as well as emergent crises, (re)configure everyday work and family lives. His research has been funded by the UKRI/ESRC (UK), SSHRC (Canada), British Academy (UK), HEFCE (UK), and Nuffield Foundation (UK).

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

Yang's research has received broad coverage by more than 100 global media outlets, including the BBC, Guardian, CNN, ABC, CNA, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, 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

• Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities