Yixuan Li

I am a historian of science and technology with a research focus on the transformation of animal agriculture in modern China. I am doing my PhD at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), University of Manchester.

My PhD project is a historical study on the development of the broiler industry in China since the 1980s, which looks at the transformation from farmers' household domestication to intensive large-scale production after the domestic rural and economic reforms and opening up to the global market in the last four decades.

My work sits at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS), agrarian history, food security, and biopolitics. I examine how state-led agricultural modernisation, global food regimes, rural infrastructures and the public understanding of food culture have shaped modern animal husbandry and the food industry. Through historical and ethnographic methods, I analyse how industrial livestock farming becomes a key site of biopolitical governance, rural transformation, and techno-economic power.

I have research interests in China's agricultural history, biopolitics in animal farming, food security, environmental humanities and multispecies studies.