Dr Yifei Yan

I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public Administration and Public Policy at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton. Externally, I am associated with the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) in the UK and the Research Centre for Sustainable Hong Kong in Hong Kong SAR, China.

My research interests lie at the intersections of comparative public policy, social policy and educational studies, with a geographical focus on emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil. Combining these research interests, my book Getting Schools to Work Better: Educational Accountability and Teacher Support in India and China, published by Routledge under the series Critical Studies in Asian Education, examines how China and India are tackling the challenge of getting schools to work better with a specific focus on supporting teachers, along with traditional accountability-strengthening measures. The book draws implications from its case studies for how education systems can be designed to enhance student learning towards the fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goal 4. It further develops the concept of "Accountability 3.0" to elucidate a novel and more holistic reconceptualisation of the appropriate means needed to fulfil multiple purposes of accountability, in which providing support to frontline workers is viewed as an integral component. The book builds on my doctoral dissertation which won the 2019 Best PhD Dissertation Award from the Indian Public Policy Network (IPPN).

My research has been published in internationally refereed journals such as the Journal of Public Affairs Education, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Teaching Public Administration, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Natural Resources Forum, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Policy Design and Practice, and Asian Education Review. I regularly contribute to platforms such as the World Economic Forum and LSE Blogs, among others. In 2020, I was selected as one of the Founders' Fellows by the American Society for Public Administration.

Born and raised in the cosmopolitan Shanghai as a third-generation migrant, I have so far lived, studied and taught in 13 countries and regions across five continents, proudly practicing the old Chinese wisdom of "travelling ten thousand miles while reading ten thousand books (读万卷书、行万里路)".