Lijia completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and currently works as a Research Associate at Cambridge Public Health Interdisciplinary Centre.
Trained as a sociologist, she has been applying social science research methods in various empirical studies and research papers. Her PhD project focuses on family separation due to migration and policy restrictions and the related inequalities of individual’s health and wellbeing, and examines links between the absence of parent/spouse and wellbeing at different stages of the life course, drawing on the analysis of large-scale quantitative data from a nationally representative Chinese dataset. With a strong interest in the development of the Global South, she previously worked as a research assistant in Uganda for the Refugee Economies Project at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford International Development Department. She was also a visiting researcher at the Centre for Empirical Research on Stratification and Inequality at Yale University, the Development Research Centre of the State Council in China, and the Centre for Time Use Research at the University of Oxford.
Currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Cambridge Public Health Interdisciplinary Centre, she is conducting research for two large mental health studies: (1) the UK-wide long-term study on ‘Mental Health in the Pandemic’ (with a strong focus on the social determinants of mental health and wellbeing and related inequalities), and (2) the evaluation of the Mental Health Awareness Week campaign which is hosted by the Mental Health Foundation.
