Academic Profile
Xi is a doctoral student at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and the Senior Wai Seng Scholar at the Asian Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on understanding the infrastructure development process in China, how the Chinese infrastructure system is vulnerable to climate change impacts such as flooding and droughts and what the adaptation implications are for policy makers.
During her PhD, she has consulted for the Latin American Energy Organisation; worked as an energy modeller for the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium; interned as a climate adaptation researcher with the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission; and facilitated dialogues between Oxford and government agencies such as the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources. Her research has been featured at the World Economic Forum Summer Davos in 2017 and presented at numerous conferences relating to infrastructure, including the Fifth GGKP Annual Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure, the International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure and the Second International Conference on Vulnerability and Risk Analysis and Management. In 2015, she co-founded the Oxford International Infrastructure Consortium (OXIIC) that aims to facilitate communication and collaboration on infrastructure between academics, policymakers and practitioners worldwide. So far, OXIIC has held two global conferences on infrastructure that gathered more than 40 world's leading infrastructure experts with 350 attendees (http://www.oxiic.org). Representatives included the newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the World Bank, OECD, the G20 Investment and Infrastructure Working Group, the Turkish Treasury, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
Before joining Oxford, Xi conducted policy research at the Chinese Ministry of the Environment and Ministry of Land and Resources on both domestic and global levels. She also interned at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on Sino-African relations, the UK-India Business Council on corporate social responsibility, and worked as an analyst at Legal & General on investing in China. Xi holds a BSc in Environmental Policy with Economics and an MSc in Environmental Economics and Climate Change from the London School of Economics.
Research Interests
- Climate change vulnerability, adaptation and risk management
- China's infrastructure development processes
- Water-related economic impacts
- Infrastructure investment
Awards
- European Commission ECOCEP Project Award 2016-2017
- Wai Seng Senior Research Scholarship 2014-2016
- Full Scholarship to the Global Sustainability Summer School, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam, Germany 2013
- Sydney Perry Foundation Award 2013