Lai Pik Chan earned her Ph.D. degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne, Germany; MA. degree in Professional Language & Intercultural Studies at the University of Leeds, U. K.;  BA. degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. She specialized in migration studies and policy analysis with a regional focus on mainland China and Hong Kong. Lai Pik passed her Ph.D. oral defence in January, 2021, and her doctoral thesis entitled "Migration in the time of change: Foreign English language teachers in Shenzhen" was published by the University of Cologne in the same year. During her studies, Lai Pik also worked as a doctoral researcher in the DFG-funded interdisciplinary research project “Chinese immigration law and policy: perspectives of lawmakers, administrators and immigrants”, part of an extensive Sino-European research cooperation focusing on immigration and the transformation of Chinese society. Currently, Lai Pik is involved in research projects on Hong Kong's arts and cultural policy.  

I enjoyed my time at the GSSC. As it not only provided a spacious office space for me to focus on my writing, but it was also a stimulating environment in which staff and PhD students exchanged ideas and supported each other. Also, the academic workshops organised and research fundings provided by the GSSC gave me the opportunities to further academic exchange with international scholars in Cologne and abroad. 

Lai Pik’s PhD dissertation "Migration in the time of change: Foreign English language teachers in Shenzhen" focuses on the lived experience of foreign English language teachers in Shenzhen, one of the four most economically developed cities in China. While Shenzhen aspires to become an “international city” and places a strong emphasis on the internationalisation of education, it attracts a lot of international migrants to work in Shenzhen as English teachers. The research provides an ethnography of the life of foreign English language teachers working in different education institutions in Shenzhen. The dissertation investigates how foreign English teachers of different backgrounds experience and navigate China’s immigration policy and employment practices in the English language teaching industry. Also, the dissertation investigates long-term settlement of foreigners and how they cultivate cosmopolitan citizenship as they try to make a life in China.