She worked at the School of City Planning, Cardiff University (2006-2011) and University of Southampton (2000-2002) before joining the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. She received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Southampton, UK in 2006. To date, she has published 13 refereed articles, 2 book chapters, 7 working papers, 1 special issue (guest editor) and 1 edited book. She has presented 16 papers at international conferences in the UK, Europe, China and America. She is joint-coordinator for the China Planning Research Group (CPRG) at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL and is supervising 6 PhD research projects on urban china planning.