School of Social and Political Science

Background

Yubai Li is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include embodiment, emotion, gender, digital sociology, and cultural sociology. She has published and forthcoming work in leading journals internationally and in China, including book reviews in The Sociological Review, Sociological Research Online, Emotion & Society, and also contributing to the special issue accepted by peer review journal, and an article independently published as an undergraduate in China’s top sociology journal, the Chinese Journal of Sociology (《社会》). Her PhD project, From Discipline to Display: Understanding Gendered Class, Embodiment and Respectability through Chinese Dancing Girls, examines how different groups of Chinese women dancers use embodied practice to navigate and make sense of class, desire, and respectability across both online and offline spaces. 

She graduated from the Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University, previously worked as a research assistant at City University of Hong Kong, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. Having engaged in academic work across multiple countries, she brings a reflexive and innovative approach to the study of gender, embodiment, and cultural life. 

Outside academia, she positions herself as a flâneuse, writer, and storyteller. She has collaborated with literary and art publishers and independent film festivals in both the UK and China, including Imaginist Press, Houlang Publishing House, and the MINT Chinese Film Festival. She is also an épée fencer in the University of Edinburgh Fencing Team.

Publications

Yubai Li. (Forthcoming 2026) “Book Review of the Feminist Art of Walking” The Sociological Review

Yubai Li. 2025 “Book Review of Intimacy as a Lens on Work and Migration Experiences of Ethnic Performers in Southwest China” Sociological Research Online 0(0).

Yubai Li, 2024 “Book Review of Failing Moms: Social Condemnation and Criminalization of Mothers” Emotion & Society 7(1), 155-156.

Yubai Li. 2020. “Female’s Body Experience and Embodied Practices in Childbirth: A Case Study in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Region” Chinese Journal of Sociology (《社会》) 40(06): 157-185. 

Selected Conferences Presentations

Yubai Li. 2025. “When the Live House Becomes a Social Theater: Scene Frames and the Production of Authenticity in Music Performance Spaces” (with Fei Yan) Chinese Sociological Association (CSA) Annual Meeting. Chengdu, China.

Yubai Li. 2024. “Cultural Resistance as Reverberated Performance: Emotion, Situation and Endurance” (with Fei Yan) American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting. Montreal, Canada.

Yubai Li. 2024. “Constructing Musical Scenes: Space of Authenticity and Sub-cultural Capital in Chinese Live House” British Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting. Online.

Yubai Li. 2023. “Echoes of Empowerment: Trans-local Framing and the Cultural Resistance in the Soundscape of DIY Music” (with Fei Yan) Yale Conference: “Cultural Sociology East and West”. New Haven, USA.

Yubai Li. 2023. “Ambivalent Resistance: Indie Music, Mobilization and Hong Kong's Localist Movement” XX ISA World Congress of Sociology. Melbourne, Australia. 

Yubai Li. 2022. “Place, Urban and Affections: Cultural Resources and Strategies for Action in Indie Bands” Annual Meeting of the Chinese Sociological Association. Xiamen, China.

Yubai Li. 2021. “State, Media, and Power: The Memory of SARS among Health Care Providers in China” Asian Universities Association and ICSGS Academic Conference. Depok, Indonesia.

Yubai Li. 2021. “Emotional Labor of Gynecologists: Rules Shaping, Othering, and Physician-patient Interaction” Annual Meeting of the Chinese Sociological Association. Chongqing, China; Doctoral Student Forum of School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University. Beijing, China.

Yubai Li. 2019. “Female’s Body Experience and Embodied Practices in Childbirth: A Case Study in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Region” Annual Meeting of the Chinese Ethnologists Association, Undergraduate Session. Nanning, China.

Teaching Experiences

Tutor 2025/26 Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World, the University of Edinburgh

Tutor 2021/22 Contemporary Sociological Theory, Tsinghua University   

Tutor 2021/22 Classical Sociological Theory, Tsinghua University

Selected Honors and Awards

PGR Research Support Fund. The University of Edinburgh (2024-2025)

School of Social and Political Science PhD Scholarship. The University of Edinburgh (2023-2026) 

Tsinghua University Comprehensive Excellent Scholarship. Tsinghua University (2022)

Best Paper Award. Doctoral Student Forum of School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University (2022)

First-Class Academic Honors. MUC (2020)(2019)(2018)

Third Prize in National Students Commercial Research and Analysis Competition. CSSC (2020)

Activity Achievement Scholarship. MUC (2019)

First Prize of Undergraduate Student Paper Award. Ministry of Education, Ethnological Committee (2019)