Yuwei Li

Yuwei’s current research explores representations of trauma in contemporary Chinese literature, with a focus on literary responses to major sociopolitical crises in 21st century China. Her research investigates the intricate relationship between narrative form and lived trauma, examining its psychological, rhetorical and cultural dimensions while tracing how Chinese literature reimagines collective suffering and interprets moments of crises. Seeking to move beyond the limits of existing trauma paradigms, her work proposes a renewed framework that situates trauma narratives within their contemporary sociopolitical context.   

Prior to beginning her PhD studies at SOAS, Yuwei obtained a BA in English Literature from the University of the West of England (Bristol), and an MA in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages from the University of Nottingham. She then spent three years in China working as a research assistant and Chinese language teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic, an experience that sparked her interest in trauma studies and its literary articulations. In 2022, she returned to the UK to pursue an MA in Chinese Studies at SOAS, graduating with distinction. The training provided the scholarly grounding and methodological tools that now underpin her doctoral research. Her wider research interests include women’s writing, Chinese intellectual history, translation studies, affect and emotion, memory studies, and censorship.  

Yuwei has published a novel in Chinese, and her poetry has appeared in several Chinese literary journals. She recently served as an editorial assistant for the bilingual anthology Himalayas: Contemporary Indian and Chinese Poetry (AARK Arts, 2025).   Yuwei is currently contributing a book chapter to an upcoming edited collection Women in World-Literature: Climate, Crisis, and Contagion (Liverpool University Press). The chapter discusses how women are represented in Chinese poetry in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these portrayals elucidate the narrative contradictions inherent in China’s socialist-capitalist system during the crisis era. 

• Contemporary Chinese Literature  
• Trauma Studies  
• Narrative and memory  
• Translation Studies  
• Intellectual history  
• Censorship