Yang Fan is a PhD candidate in Ethnology at Sun Yat-sen University (2023–present) and a visiting researcher at the University of Malaya (September 2024–August 2025). Her research focuses on the borderlands of Kelantan, Malaysia, and Narathiwat, Thailand, particularly the Golok River. She explores how the river serves as both a historical heritage and a symbolic space that simultaneously connects and divides communities. Through ethnographic fieldwork, she examines how collective memory, shaped by history and politics, influences identity formation in border communities. Her work also addresses the region’s cultural dynamics, where cross-border marriages, education, and trade shape everyday life. Since 2021, she has contributed as a student assistant to the Global South Studies Center (GSSC) at the University of Cologne, working on the project Chinese Indentured Labor as "New Slavery".

• Border anthropology
• Malay studies
• Ethnic relations
• Overseas Chinese