Yi Qie

Yi is a DPhil student in Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation. Her research explores mechanisms through which inequality and migration affect early childhood development, and how evidence-based policy can improve the wellbeing of unprivileged children and families in the context of rapid urbanization.

In her thesis, Yi is investigating the impacts of parental migration on the early development of left-behind children in contemporary China. She evaluates what makes interventions effective and how they could be further improved and scaled up to create sustainable impacts.

Addressing social inequality has been a driving motivation in Yi’s professional and academic career thus far. Prior to starting her DPhil, Yi worked as a Program Officer and Assistant Research Fellow at China Development Research Foundation (CDRF), Development Research Centre of the State Council (DRC), to provide evidence on the effective design and implementation of interventions to promote early childhood development in remote locations and vulnerable communities. Yi has over five years of experience working on family-based programmes in low-resource settings, conducting policy research, managing pilots in western and mid-west rural China, and facilitating international dialogues on poverty alleviation and children's development.

Yi holds a M.A. degree in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Columbia University and a B.A. degree in Management from Renmin University of China. Her DPhil research is under the co-supervision of Professor Jane Barlow (DSPI) and Professor Rachel Murphy (Oxford School of Global and Area Studies).