Yaxuan Zhou is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She completed her MSc in Social Policy and Social Research at University College London, and BA in Sociology at Lanzhou University. Her research interests include environmental sociology, social inequalities, population health, and quantitative methods.
Her research focuses on the society-individual-environment interactions: a) how political-economic factors shape environmental issues, and how varying levels of exposure to these issues impact individuals; b) the consequences of the environmental crisis, and ways to mitigate them; and c) how people respond to environmental problems, and what roles do power, social stratification, and inequality play in the whole process. Particularly, she is interested in conducting longitudinal and comparative research, and is currently exploring ways to incorporate macro-level perspectives into her work.