Fei Yan(严飞) is an Associate Professor in Sociology at Tsinghua University, specializing in historical sociology, political sociology, and cultural sociology. He obtained his PhD in sociology from the University of Oxford. Yan held prestigious fellowships at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and The Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University, as well as at The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

Yan is the author of Drivers of Innovation: Entrepreneurship, Education, and Finance in Asia (Stanford Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2023) and Understanding China through Big Data: Applications of Theory-oriented Quantitative Approaches (Routledge, 2022). His research has been published in numerous prestigious journals, including Social Science Research, The Sociological Review, Social Movement Studies, Poetics, Urban Studies, Environment and Urbanization, Journal of Educational Change, Development Policy Review, The China Quarterly, The China Journal, Journal of Contemporary China, Modern China, and China Information. Yan has been honored with grants and awards from prestigious institutions such as the Association for Asian Studies, the Institute for Humane Studies, Royal Historical Society, China and Asia-Pacific Research Society, and Cyrus Tang Foundation.