Kevin Yu is a socio-cultural anthropologist at Rice University whose research lies at the intersection of law, politics, gender, and transnational governance, with a particular focus on China and the Global South.
His work engages three overlapping areas:
1. China, Africa, and the Global South.
Kevin’s regional focus centers on how Chinese investment, labor, and migration practices extend their influence through legal diffusion and dispute resolution in the Global South. He previously served as a judicial clerk at the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal in Rwanda, and his ethnographic work examines how Chinese law operates across borders through both formal and informal mechanisms.
2. Legal and political anthropology.
His scholarship on judicial institutions, dispute resolution, gender and law, and legal education has received multiple academic awards and has been published in both English and Chinese journals. He is a founding member of an overseas Chinese law research Network under the International Society for Law and Interdisciplinary Studies, and and serves as the section convener for the Chinese Legal Anthropology Reading Group. His work and these networks are committed to fosters interdisciplinary dialogue on law and society in contemporary China.
3. Gender and sexual rights.
Kevin used to work with nearly all of the major LGBTQ+ NGOs and international organizations previously active in China, receiving international recognition for his contributions. As a long-time practitioner in this field, he has led landmark initiatives in legal aid, impact litigation, legislative advocacy, organizational reform, legal ethnography, and oral history in the Chinese LGBTQ+ context. He currently convenes the only network for law and sexuality research in China and collaborates with legal scholars to develop a culturally rooted and legally embedded framework for studying sexual and gender minorities in the Chinese legal system.
Kevin received legal training in different jurisdictions and multiple degrees with honors and top distinctions from Stanford University, the Australian National University, and Zhejiang University. He hopes to plant curious and messy anthropological questions—where law meets life, and rights meet reality.