Yi Fan Liu

Car-sharing affects: Gender, technology and labour

As a socio-cultural geographer, Yi Fan studies urban sustainability and mobility solutions through non-representational and feminist theories. Her doctoral research features a large-scale electric car-sharing service in Singapore, and she examines how such a solution is experienced by various actors beyond the promise of enacting socio-environmental transitions. Against pressing concerns about how sustainability objectives can be achieved in cities, her work offers insight into why urban sustainability remains as an ambivalent space, and how interventions should be socially attuned and approached with care.

Prior to Oxford, Yi Fan received her MSc in Environment, Politics and Society (Distinction) at University College London and BA in Environmental Studies (Hons. with Distinction) at the National University of Singapore.
 

Awards and Grants

• Research Environment and Culture Fund (2026)
• Gender & Feminist Geographies Research Group Grant (2026)
• Transport Geography Research Group Best Postgraduate Presentation Award (2025)
• RCSC BES Prize for Best Thesis in the Field of Environmental Sustainability (2019)

Forthcoming

• Liu, Y. F. (2026) Rethinking the Solutionism of Electric Vehicles. In, Sanchez, T.W. and Ye, X. (eds.) Handbook of Disruptive Urban Technologies and Society. De Gruyter.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• Liu, Y.F., Altaf, M. and Lee, S. (2025) No easy exit: Negotiating affects and researcher self-care in car ride-alongs. Area, e70040.
• Liu, Y.F. (2022) Dreams and Parables of Sustainable Mobilities. Transfers, 12(2), 79-90.

Book reviews

• Liu, Y.F. (2022) Migrant Mothers in the Digital Age: Emotion and Belonging in Migrant Maternal Online Communities. Emotion, Space and Society, 44, 100898.

Conference presentations

• ‘Feminism and Hope’ Panel in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, 18 June 2026.
• ‘Car-sharing Masculinities and the Gendered Complexities of Automobility’ at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, University of Birmingham, 26 – 29 August 2025.
• ‘Everyday Mobilities: Social, Cultural, and Environmental Perspectives on Getting Around’ at the University of Exeter, 4 – 5 July 2024.
• ‘Pluralising Mobile Methods’ at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Honolulu, 16 – 20 April 2024.
• ‘What Drives Electric Car-sharing Assemblages? Automation, Digitalisation and Infrastructure’ at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Honolulu, 16 – 20 April 2024.