About Me

I grew up in the city of Shenzhen in Southern China and moved to England when I was 15 years of age. 

My family was traditional culturally. My mother was a surgeon, then an HR, and my father remained in peacetime army up till this day. Though Western values are alien to them, both my parents adopted my education as their utmost priority. They grew up during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, devoid of opportunities to attend higher education. Neither of them spoke a single phrase of English. 

Nobody in my family knew what higher education is like, not to say the realities of academic research. Not until the pandemic did I find out that I was a first-gen university student; it was rarely spoken about during my upbringing. 

Shock and confusion engulfed my devotion to pursue a PhD initially. With time that mutual decision of support emerged from my mother and father. I'd like to dedicate this site to them and the enormous amount of care and understanding they have provided me, unconditionally, with love, the pure parental instinct for their only child to flourish.