Dr Yuwei Xu is a Research Fellow at UCL Institute of Education and a Convenor of the BERA Early Career Researcher Network. He gained his PhD in gender and early childhood studies in 2018 from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Yuwei is a sociologist of education and childhood and has a particular research interest in the influences of gender on young children’s experiences in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. His PhD project investigated how gender is embedded in the day-to-day interactions between practitioners and children, adopting a cross-cultural approach to engage with gender discourses in Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. Yuwei is currently doing four research projects, including:

• Cross-cultural Reflexivity and Gender-Sensitive Teacher Training in Early Childhood Education and Care (2019-2020), Principal Investigator, funded by British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE);
• The Life Trajectories of Women PhD Students in STEM: A Comparative Study of China, Serbia, and the UK (2018-2020), Principal Investigator, funded by University of Portsmouth Theme Research & Innovation Fund;
• Child-centred Diversity in Quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in China (2018-2020), Principal Investigator, funded by Smart Vision International Kindergarten, Weifang, China;
• An International Research Study on Men’s Career Trajectories in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) (2017-2019), Co-Investigator.