Dr Yunan Xu
- Assistant Professor, Development Studies
- University Teaching Officer
Contact
About
Yunan Xu is an assistant professor of development studies at the Centre of Development Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS). She is a section editor (Key Concepts Section) of the Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS).
Before joining the University of Cambridge, she was a postdoctoral researcher working on an ERC Advanced Grant project (RRUSHES-5) at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. She was also previously a postdoctoral researcher at Singapore Management University in Singapore, working on a project related to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
She holds a PhD in development studies from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Research
Yunan’s research interests include food politics, land politics, the agrochemical complex, plantations, rural transformation, land-labour nexus(including rural-urban migration and cross-border migration) and livelihood changes. Her work centers on China’s global interconnections.
Yunan’s doctoral research analyzed the rise of industrial tree plantations in southern China through a critical political economy and political ecology lens. Her study put the logic of capital front and centre, demonstrating the complicated role of China in the global land rush.
During her post-doctoral work, Yunan contributed to an ERC Advanced Grant project (RRUSHES-5), studying the global land rush and how it shapes and is shaped by five spheres of social life (food, climate change, geopolitics, labour, and citizenship) across seven countries, including Ethiopia, Mozambique, Colombia, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and China.
She is currently researching the global food transformation and its intersections with land use and property rights, agrochemicals, and infrastructure sectors.
Key publications:
- Xu, Yunan, 2020. Industrial Tree Plantations and the Land Rush in China: Implications for Global Land Grabbing. London: Routledge.
- Bruna, Natacha, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., and Yunan Xu. 2025. “Failed Land Deals and the Invisibilization of Land Grabbing in Mozambique.” Globalizations, 1–18. DOI:10.1080/14747731.2025.2528511
- Xu, Y., Wang, C., Ye, J. et al. 2025. Migrant labour flows and interconnected agrarian transformations in Southern China. Agric Hum Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10692-y
- Xu, Y., & Chen, Y. 2024. The agrochemical complex of China: historical, global and intersectoral connections. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2024.2429477
- Xu, Yunan, and Saturnino M. Borras, Jr., 2024. China and Global Land Use Change, in Saturnino M. Borras, Jr., and Jennifer C. Franco (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Land Politics. (Oxford University Press. Doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197618646.013.49
- Xu, Yunan, 2023. “Taken-left” dynamics? Rethink the livelihood changes of affected villagers in the era of the global land rush. Agriculture and Human Values, 40(3), pp.1171-1184. DOI: 10.1007/s10460-022-10404-4
- Wang, C., & Xu, Yunan. 2022. Reflecting on the Plantationocene: the political economy of sugarcane plantations in Guangxi, China. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 51(3), pp.564–585. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2022.2087180
- Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Jennifer C. Franco, Tsegaye Moreda, Yunan Xu, Natacha Bruna and Binyam Afewerk Demena, 2022. The value of so-called ‘failed’ large-scale land acquisitions. Land Use Policy. 119, pp.1-17. DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106199
- Xu, Yunan, 2019. Rethinking the politics of land use change: insights from the rise of the industrial tree plantation sector in Southern China. Land Use Policy 87. DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104025
- Xu, Yunan, 2019.The politics of inclusion and exclusion in the emerging industrial tree plantation sector in China. Journal of Peasant Studies 46(4), pp.767-791. DOI:10.1080/03066150.2017.1405936
- Xu, Yunan, 2018. Land grabbing by villagers? Insights from intimate land grabbing in the rise of industrial tree plantation sector in Guangxi, China. Geoforum 96, pp.141-149. DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.08.012
- Xu, Yunan. 2018 Political economy of land grabbing inside China involving foreign investors. Third World Quarterly 39(11), pp. 2018: 2069-2084. DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2018.1447372.