Skip to main content
Sin yi Cheung  BSoc Sc. M.Phil. D.Phil. (Oxon)

Professor Sin yi Cheung

BSoc Sc. M.Phil. D.Phil. (Oxon)

Professor of Sociology

School of Social Sciences

Comment
Media commentator
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I am Professor of Sociology, an elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and Co-Director of Research in the School of Social Sciences. I served on the Senior Management Team in the School as International Director (2014-2017) before establishing the Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Diversity Research Group. Externally, I served on editorial boards of the BSA journal Sociology and the ASA journal Sociology of Education, the UKRI REF2021 Research Excellence Framework Social Work and Social Policy sub-panel (SP20) as a full panel member. In addition to being a member of the Humanities and Social Science Panel of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council under the University Grants Committee (2022-2024), I also serve on the ESRC Centres Grant Competition Commissioning Panel, and the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) Independent Advisory Board. I am Editor-in-Chief of the open access Journal Frontiers of Sociology: Race and Ethnicity. 

My research addresses different forms of social inequalities in contemporary societies. I have published on refugee integration, the changing inequalities in higher education, ethnic and religious penalties in the labour market, lone parents on benefits, claimants' dynamics, and children in care. Trained as a quantitative sociologist, committed to interdisciplinarity and methodological pluralism, I collaborate with researchers in social policy, education, economics, psychology and human geography. My research has received funding from the British Academy, Economic and Social Research Council, European Union, Leverhulme Trust, Nuffield Foundation, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Health and Care Research Wales as well as central government departments such as the Department for Work and Pensions, and local authorities. Over the years I have held invited guest professorships and visiting scholar positions at Wisconsin-Madison, UCLA, Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, New York University and Keio University.

Publication

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2010

2008

2007

2006

2003

2001

1998

1997

1995

1994

Articles

Book sections

Books

Conferences

Monographs

Websites

Research

Sin Yi's current research examines ethnic and religious inequalities among children receiving social services support, their educational outcomes and health services usage (funded by Health and Care Research Wales). Her most recent work includes a detailed analysis of how asylum waiting time creates a violence of uncertainty which severely undermines refugee's mental health (in Social Science and Medicine); and outcomes of social work intervention among vulnerable families. A research monograph the Death of Human Capital with Brown and Lauder directly challenges the assumption that education pays. Her other recent research projects range from a cross-national comparative study of health services usage in superdiverse neighbourhoods (funded by NORFACE, with J Phillimore, University of Birmingham); horizontal stratification in higher education; to two Nuffield Foundation funded research projects: Social Work Contact using British cohort studies (with J Scourfield) investigating the effect of social work intervention on families and children; and Social Networks, Social Capital and Refugee integration (with J Phillimore); and an innovative equal pay project using secondary data analysis to study women's pay penalty in Wales (WAVE: Women Adding Value to the Economy) funded by the European Social Fund.

Teaching

Sin Yi welcomes PhD applications on topics related to any areas of her research interests on migration, refugee integration, racial ethnic and religious inequalities, as well as sociology of education and intersectional labour market inequalities.

I enjoy teaching courses on undergraduate and masters level and also supervising PhD students. UG modules I convene/teach include Secondary Data Analysis; Migration 'Race' and Ethnic Relations; Equality and Diversity in Education and Work.

 

Biography

Professor Sin Yi Cheung joined Cardiff University in 2011 having previously taught sociology at the University of Birmingham and Oxford Brookes University. Before receiving her M.Phil and D.Phil. in Sociology at St. Anthony's College, the University of Oxford, Sin Yi worked as a research officer at the Department of Applied Social Studies and Social Research, University of Oxford, which is now the Department of Social Policy and Intervention. She worked on a number of research projects ranging from claimants' dynamics, lone parents in and out of benefits, Oxfordshire Poverty Mapping (funded by Oxford City Council), to the early development of the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) in the Social Disadvantage Research Group. Sin Yi is an elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales since 2022.

Honours and awards

Outstanding Contribution Awards 2015

Celebrating Excellence Awards 2017 Finalist: Outstanding Contribution to the University's International Activities.

JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Invitation Fellowship at the University of Tokyo (2017)

Global Guest Professorship, Keio University, funded by JSPS (2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2023-2024)

Professional memberships

  • Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society
  • American Sociological Association
  • British Sociological Association
  • European Sociological Association. Board member of Research Network on Quantitative Methods (RN21) 2013-2015
  • International Sociology Association (ISA): Research Committee on Social Stratification and Social Mobility (RC28)

Committees and reviewing

  • Director of Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Diversity (MEAD) Research Group
  • Editor-in-Chief, Frontiers in Sociology (Race and Ethnicity)
  • NCRM (National Centre for Research Methods) Advisory Board
  • EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) Expert Advisory Panel
  • ESRC Peer Review College
  • Race Equality Staff Working Group, Cardiff Unversity (2014-2020)
  • REF Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group
  • International Academic Liaison Steering Group, AHSS. (2014-2017)

Supervisions

I welcome PhD applicants in any of the broad research areas of migration, asylum seekers and refugee integration, ethnic, racial and religious inequalities, sociology of education, social stratification, and intersectional labour market inequalities.

ESRC funded PhD students:

  • Henna Nisa (Sociology Pathway) "Doing Daughterhood in Pakistani families: changes and continuities across three generation of women"
  • Anaer Yeerjiang (Linguistic Training Pathway) "Black, Asian and minority ethnic and the professional workforce: the relationship between intersectionally diverse workforces and appreciation of diversity in Welsh Schools (co-funded by the Welsh Govt, with Michael Handford in the School of English Communication and Philosophy).
  • Luret Lar (Social Policy Pathway) "Violence against migrant women and girls with No Recourse To Public Fund".
  • Kemba Hadaway-Morgan (Social Work)
  • Myfanwy Bowring (EdD)
  • Elsie Owusu-Kumi (EdD)

Research themes

Specialisms

  • economic sociology,
  • Migration
  • ethnic and racial inequalities
  • Sociology of education
  • labour market