Yijing (Daisy) Li MSc BSc

PhD Candidate

The research for my PhD is on an aspect of the Geography of Crime in China. I shall be using GIS and spatial data analysis.

Biography

Yijing's first degree (Qingdao University, China) was in Environmental Science and Engineering. She finished her fourth year bachelor project on the SOC (self-organized criticality) phenomenon in ecological security during the rapid urbanization in Shenzhen in Peking University, China, this encouraged her to do further research in Shenzhen.

She was recommended to pursue her Master degree in Peking University, undertaking several ecological planning projects and got her Master's degree in Urban Ecology after the project on Vegetation Change in Shenzhen during the rapid urbanization. In October 2008, she started her PhD study in Cambridge funded by CSC-Cambridge Overseas Trust Scholarship.

Qualifications

PhD Candidate, Dept. of Geography, University of Cambridge, 2008-present.
M.Sc., Dept. of Ecology, Peking University, China, 2005-2008.
B.Sc., Dept. of Environmental Science and Engineering, Qingdao University, China, 2001-2005.

Awards and scholarships

China Scholarship Council Cambridge Overseas Trust Scholarship, October 2008-October 2011.
Philip Lake Fund, Department of Geography, February 2010 & November 2010.
Learning and Research Fund, St John's College, University of Cambridge, May 2009, April 2010 & December 2010.
Travel Grant, Cambridge Philosophical Society, University of Cambridge, February 2010.
Hong Kong Research Grant, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), March 2010.

Research

Yijing's research focuses on the impacts of rapid urbanization on crime in China, using GIS and spatial data analysis methods to analyze the spatial-temporal distribution of different crime patterns at different scales.

Since the economic reform in 1978, China has undergone a tremendous transition and urbanization process. Consequently crimes in China, such as robbery also saw great changes during this period, especially in Guangdong Province, which is the window for the world to see the fruit of modernization. Socioeconomic changes have had obvious impacts on crimes in China.

Historically, the impacts of urbanization on crimes in China were mainly focused on by sociologists and psychologists, there is no research on it from a geographer's point of view; as for studies of economically motivated crimes, they were based on cross-national data (Bennett, 1991) and the relationships of the crimes' levels and the stages of modernization (Lafree, 1999; Neapolitan, 1997), rarely done at a local scale; the theories in this field were developed in western industrialized countries (Farrington, 2000), using data geographically imbalanced towards western developed countries (Neapolitan, 1997), China has been neglected, which renders these theories unbalanced and incomplete; considering the distinction and uniqueness of Chinese culture and social system, it is an innovation to do such study in China using GIS and spatial data analysis approaches, and it can also test the theories from another angle.

Analysis will be done at different temporal-spatial scales, such as the national, provincial, city and neighbourhood scales: a provincial level analysis which examines crime data for all the provinces in China thereby putting Guangdong in the context of China as a whole; a city level analysis of Guangdong province itself to look at how crime rates vary in different parts of the province, which will depend on the data available at the intra-provincial level; finally one or more neighbourhood studies within Shenzhen city will be executed to explore the relationships between neighbourhood safety and environment.

Publications

Using Standardized NDVI to Access Vegetation Change of Shenzhen City. 2008. Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology, 19(5): 1064-1070
Evaluation of urban harmonious development based on environmental priority principle: a case study in the Great Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration, 2008. Chinese Journal of Ecology, 27(4): 675-680
'Analysis of the processes driving vegetation change in Shenzhen', Conference (2007). Report and Abstract for the 5th National Landscape Ecology Seminar.

External activities

Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (2008-present)
Fellow of the Royal Geography Society (2009-present)
Treasurer, St John's College MCR (Samuel Bulter Room Society), University of Cambridge