Dr Yang Hu

Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Data Science

Research Interests

Follow Yang on ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Personal Website, and Twitter.

During Covid-19, my virtual office hours are 4:30-5:30pm on Mondays and 3:00-4:00pm on Fridays, please connect with yang.hu@lancaster.ac.uk via Microsoft Teams. You can pre-book an appointment with me, uisng this link: https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/appointments/yanghu

Yang Hu's research focuses on changing family, gender and sexual relations, and their intersection with population mobility in a global context. His research contributes to advancing gender and social equalities, family justice, and understandings of how macro socio-economic, political and institutional developments and cultural changes (re)configure everyday family and intimate lives:

1. Transnational family and intimate relationships

The first strand of Yang’s research focuses on mobilities and family relations in a transnational context. Yang’s first book Chinese-British Intermarriage examines how men and women negotiate, (re)construct and make sense of their intersecting gender and ethnic identities in Chinese-British inter-ethnic families in the UK. The book was nominated for the 2017 British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Prize. Yang has also published on the formation of transnational marital orientations, and the mobility of Chinese international students. Funded by The Sociological Review Foundation, Yang has organised (with D. Nehring) the 2017 Sociological Review Symposium on ‘Transnational Family Justice in Migration Crises’.

Yang's recent research examines refugee family mobility and changing border regimes in Europe.

2. (Changing) work-family, gender and sexual relations and values in regional and cross-national contexts

The second strand of Yang’s research focuses on families, gender and sexuality over the life course in regional (China and the UK) and cross-national contexts. Published topics include: cross-national variations in domestic gender inequalities, family and gender values in China, ideational impact of migration, social change and geographical variations in sex ideologies, intergenerational reproduction of gender inequalities, intergenerational marital mobility, life-course trajectories of marital disruption and remarriage, living space and mental health, and new forms of intimate relationships such as living apart together. 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 UK and Canadian labour market. At Lancaster, Yang co-founded and co-convenes (with J. Fledderjohann) the LAARG (Lancaster Asia Area Research Group).

Yang's recent research activities have been funded by organisations such as the UKRI/ESRC, Nuffield Foundation, British Academy, The Sociological Review Foundation, HEFCE (N8), and Shanghai Social Science Research Council.

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

At Lancaster, Yang is also affiliated with:

Qualifications

BA (Zhejiang University); MPhil & PhD (Cambridge, as Gates Scholar)

Career Details

Yang Hu is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. Yang obtained his MPhil and Ph.D in Sociology as a Gates Scholar from the University of Cambridge, and his B.A. from Zhejiang University, China. He previously taught and supervised students in social sciences at the University of Cambridge. He has also worked as an interpreter/translator for organisations such as the UNDP. He is author of the book Chinese-British Intermarriage—Disentangling Gender and Ethnicity. His research has appeared in Journal of Marriage and Family, European Sociological Review, Chinese Sociological Review, Journal of Youth Studies, Children and Youth Services Review, Environment and Planning A, Journal of Sex Research, Demographic Research, Journal of Family Issues and so on. His social commentaries have been published in major media outlets, such as the United Press, Time Magazine, Quartz, Xinhua News, 163.com, etc.

Current Teaching

GWS.101 Femininity and masculinity in East Asia and in a transnational context
SOCL.101 Globalisatio trilogy: Global imaginaries, global mobilities, and global inequalities
SWK.116 Family changes and family diversity
SOCL.248 Global families and intimacy

PhD Supervision Interests

Yang would be happy to work with students in (the intersection of) the following areas: sociology of families (marriage and intimate relationships, intergenerational relations, child development, and gender), regional and international migration, race and ethnicity, globalisation and transnationalisation, East Asian societies, and research methodology.