Yushan Xie is a Research Officer at Oxford University’s Centre on Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance (SKOPE). Her research is grounded in a commitment to social justice, educational equity, and individual agency. She completed her DPhil in Education at Oxford University, during which her research investigated the interplay between student mobility, access, experience, graduate outcomes, and the socio-political imaginaries that shape higher education (HE) and student life trajectories in China. She worked with students coming from marginalised rural backgrounds pursuing HE at the lower tier of the institutional hierarchy and explored how they navigated and negotiated with dominant ideological frameworks like meritocracy, elitism, and credentialism. As a researcher at SKOPE, she has contributed to various consultancy and research projects on diverse tertiary education systems, working with UK policymakers and international organisations like WorldSkills International.

She was a fully-funded Clarendon Scholar and successfully secured several scholarships and grants during her DPhil journey. At the Department of Education, she taught postgraduate-level modules for two years as a Doctoral Teaching Fellow.