People - The 糖心原创

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Image of Yuwei Xu 徐玉炜

Yuwei Xu 徐玉炜

Co-Director of Taught Courses & Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Social Sciences

Personal Details
Research Supervision Areas
Publications

Contact

workRoom B71 & C89 Dearing Building
Jubilee Campus
Wollaton Road
Nottingham
NG8 1BB
UK
work0115 951 3708
Yuwei.Xu@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

joined the School of Education, 糖心原创 as an Assistant Professor in 2021 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. He is the founder and co-convenor of the Global Childhoods Research Group (GCRG), a core member of the Committee for UNESCO Chair in International Education and Development, and was MA Education course leader until 2023/24. In 2025, Yuwei took up the role of Co-Director of Taught Courses in the School of Education (2025-2027). Previously, Yuwei has held academic positions at University College London (2019-2021) and the University of Portsmouth (2016-2019).

Dr Yuwei Xu holds the below external roles:

- Co-Editor-in-Chief,

- Editor,

- Editorial board member, &

- Council member and England representative,

- Membership lead,

- Executive member,

Expertise Summary

Dr Yuwei Xu is a sociologist of (early) childhood, education, and gender; with a PhD awarded by the University of Glasgow, Scotland (2018), an MA in Child Studies from King's College London (KCL, 2012), and a BEd in Early Childhood Education from Shanxi University, China (2011). His work seeks to disrupt socially constructed norms around gender and childhood in and through education. He has researched topics such as gender and men in early childhood education, LGBT teachers, child agency, child-centred diversity and quality education, parenting, and women in STEM. His research is cross-cultural and comparative, having conducted projects in contexts such as the UK, China, Europe, Australia, and South Africa in collaboration with international researchers.

For a general introduction to Dr Xu's main research, please listen to this public (in English), read this (in Chinese), or watch this (in Chinese).

Teaching Summary

I teach and convene MA Education and MA Education (Online) modules. These include:

EDUC4308 Understanding and Planning Educational Research

EDUC4314 Global Perspectives on Early Childhood Education (Module Convenor)

EDUC4135 Global Perspectives on Early Childhood Education (Online, Module Convenor) &

EDUC4024 MA Education Dissertation

I have previously taught BA Education, both as Year 1 and Curriculum Lead and module convenor for EDUC3037 Inclusive Education. I was MA Education course leader for three years until 2023/24.

PhD Supervisions:

*Please note I have very limited capacity to consider new applications for 2026/27. Please only get in touch if your proposed PhD closely aligns with my research areas. I encourage you to read my publications and decide if I am a suitable supervisor for you, before you contact me. I also encourage you to consider applying for 2027/28 if that works for you.

I am supervising/supervised the following PhD students:

Gender, power, and (early) childhood

Tianqing Bai, Girls' peer cultures in Chinese middle school: online and offline interactions (Nottingham-CSC Research Excellence Scholarship, 2025 - )

Jingxuan Wang, Disrupting deficit views on children from divorced families in Chinese educational contexts (Nottingham, 2024 - );

Hannah Burrows, Diversifying Child Friendly Nottingham: Perspectives from Primary School-Aged Children ( PhD Studentship, 2023 - );

Zhuoran Chen, Children's gender subjectivities and picture books in early childhood education (Nottingham, 2022 - );

, Gender & drama education in Chinese ECEC (Durham University, COMPLETED 2026);

, Men in Australian ECEC (The University of Queensland, COMPLETED 2022);

Teachers and teaching

Amin Zhu, Retention of international early childhood teachers in Australia (The University of Queensland, 2024 - );

Wanyue Chen, Teaching and learning research in school-university partnership (Nottingham, 2022 - );

Shuying Li, Dialogic teaching in primary school classrooms (Nottingham, 2022 - );

Ning Ning, Curriculum adjustment in inclusive education in China (Nottingham, 2022 - );

Higher education

Jiajie Liu, Academic identity of Chinese early career academics (UCL, 2020 - );

Qiaohui Xue, Relationships and sexuality education in Chinese universities (Nottingham, 2022 - );

, Female engineering students in Chinese universities (UCL, COMPLETED 2025; Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Tsinghua University, China 2025-2027).

External Examination:

BA (Hons) Child and Youth Studies, University of Derby (2018 - 2023);

MA Education, King's College London (2023-2027);

MA Children in Society, University of Warwick (2025-2029);

I have been an external examiner for PhD and EdD theses at the following universities:

UK: Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cambridge, East London, Edinburgh, & Leeds; Sheffield Hallam University; Lancaster University; Open University;

South Africa: Universities of KwaZulu-Natal and The Free State;

Hong Kong: The Education University of Hong Kong;

Australia: Queensland University of Technology.

Research Summary

I work/have worked on the following research projects:

1. The Hong Kong experience: memories of new immigrant families in Nottingham (as co-investigator, funded by AHRC Impact Acceleration Account, 糖心原创, ?11,927.6, 2024-2025);

2. The potential of Froebelian philosophy to support and engage low-income families in the early years (as co-investigator, funded by Froebel Trust, ?43,243, 2023-2024);

3. Teacher Education for Sustainable Development and Children's Rights: UK-China Dialogues (as principal investigator, funded by ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, 糖心原创, ?11,064, 2022-2023);

4. Understanding young children's perspectives on and experiences of COVID-19 in China and the UK (as principal investigator, funded by UCL-ZJU Strategic Partner Fund, ?10k, 2021-2022);

5. LGBT Educators' Practices Concerning Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC): An Exploratory 糖心原创 of Australia, England, Mainland China and Hong Kong, (as principal investigator, funded by IOE International Funds, ?5k, 2021-2022);

6. Cross-cultural reflexivity and gender-sensitive teacher training in early childhood education and care (ECEC): Case studies in England, Germany, and Sweden (as principal investigator, funded by British Association for International and Comparative Education, ?5k, 2019-2022);

7. Young children's perspectives on their male and female teachers: 9-country case studies (as co-principal investigator, 2020-2023);

8. The life trajectories of women PhD students in STEM: A Comparative 糖心原创 of China, Serbia and the UK (as principal investigator, funded by University of Portsmouth Theme Research & Innovation Fund, ?10k, 2018-2020);

9. Child-centred diversity in quality early childhood education and care (as principal investigator, funded by Smart Vision, China, ?11k, 2018-2020);

10. The inward and outward mobilities of Chinese academics who obtained their PhDs from outside China (as co-investigator, funded by Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China, ?80k, 2020-2021).

Selected Publications

XU, YUWEI, BROOKS, CLARE, GAO, JIE and KITTO, ELEANOR, 2025. Pedagogy, Culture & Society. 33(2), 655-674
XU, YUWEI, SCHWEISFURTH, MICHELE and READ, BARBARA, 2022. Comparative Education. 58(3), 345-363
XU, YUWEI, 2020. Children & Society. 34(5), 354-370
XU, YUWEI, 2020. EARLY YEARS. 40(1), 109-124

View all publications

**Please note I have very limited capacity to consider new applications for 2026/27. Please only get in touch if your proposed PhD closely aligns with my research areas. I encourage you to read my publications and decide if I am a suitable supervisor for you, before you contact me. I also encourage you to consider applying for 2027/28 if that works for you.