Yan Huang
Associate Professor 地理科学学院
Field: political geography, tourism geopolitics, border, territory, South China Sea, Sino-ASEAN relations, maritime geopolitics
yan.huang1207@scnu.edu.cn; yanhuang1207@qq.com

Education

Ph.D. 2018-2022   School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University           
Supervisors: Professor Andy Bennett, Dr Samid Suliman
Thesis: Cruising a disputed sea: the geopolitics of tourism in the South China Sea
Thesis Examiners: Professor Jason Dittmer, University College London; Dr Elisa Wynne-Hughes, Cardiff University

Ph.D. 2017-2018   Department of Tourism, Sport & Hotel Management of Business School, Griffith University

M.S. 2013-2016    Human Geography, Shaanxi Normal University                
Thesis: The analysis of spatial competition and conflict potential of multi-groups in an ethnic
             tourism community of western China

B.S. 2009-2013    Geographical Science, South China Normal University    

Experience

  • Jul 2026–Present, Associate Professor, South China Normal University
  • Dec 2025-July 2026, Research Fellow, South China Normal University
  • Dec 2022 -Dec 2025, Research Associate, South China Normal University
  • Jul 2022 -Jul 2024, Adjunct Research Fellow, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research

Teaching

  • 《Academic Training 1: Reading and Topic-choosing》, second-year undergraduate course；
  • 《Tourism Geography》, third-year undergraduate course.

Academics

  • Principal Investigator, General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Border Tourism as Infrastructure of (De)territorialisation: Modes, Mechanisms, and Effects across Maritime and Land Borders, Jan 1, 2027–Dec 31, 2030, CNY 480,000.
 
  • Principal Investigator, General Program of the Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2025A1515011123), The Geopolitics of Transboundary Cruise Tourism in the South China Sea: Characteristics, Evolution, and Effects, Jan 1, 2025–Dec 31, 2027, CNY 100,000, ongoing.
 
  • Principal Investigator, Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42301259), Unravelling the Dynamic Entanglements of Tourism with Multi-scalar Geopolitics in the South China Sea, Jan 1, 2024–Dec 31, 2026, CNY 300,000, ongoing.
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  • Project Participant, Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42230705), Research on the South China Sea Issue from a Political Geography Perspective, Jan 1, 2023–Dec 31, 2027, CNY 2,700,000, ongoing.
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  • Project Participant, National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41571174), Value Structure, Changes, and Effects of Rural Landscapes in Western China in the Context of Tourism Development, Jan 1, 2016–Dec 31, 2019, CNY 700,000, completed.

Honor

Yan Huang is a tenured Associate Professor in the School of Geography at South China Normal University. She received her PhD from Griffith University, Australia. Her research lies at the intersection of political geography, border studies, tourism geopolitics, and maritime geopolitics, with the South China Sea as a major empirical focus. She examines how tourism, infrastructure, and everyday mobility become entangled with processes of territorialisation, border governance, and multi-scalar geopolitics across maritime and land borders. Her current research develops an infrastructural perspective on border tourism, exploring how different modes of development and control shape territorialising and deterritorialising practices, mechanisms, and geopolitical effects. More broadly, her work contributes to conceptual debates on territorial socialisation, tourism as a method for geopolitical inquiry, and relational and multi-scalar approaches to geopolitical analysis. Her research has been published in Political Geography, Geopolitics, Territory, Politics, Governance, Tourism Geographies, Australian Geographer, among others. Publications


For a complete list of publications, please see my academic profiles on ResearchGate and Google Scholar:
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yan-Huang-78
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wkoIgk0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

Patents
  • Liu, Y., Peng, J., Huang, Y., & Tan, Z. (2025). A Machine Reading Comprehension-Based Method for Few-Shot Multi-Label Text Classification. Chinese Patent No. CN250038CX, granted on 26 January 2025.
  • Liu, Y., Sun, M., & Huang, Y. (2025). A Knowledge Graph Multi-Hop Retrieval Method Integrating Semantic Parsing and Graph Embedding. Chinese Patent No. CN50037CX, granted on 21 January 2025.

Affiliations

  • Academic Advisor, 2023 undergraduate cohort in human geography, School of Geography, South China Normal University
  • Teaching Secretary, School of Geography, South China Normal University, undergraduate curriculum administration and timetabling
  • Peer reviewer for SSCI Q1 journals in political geography, international relations, and tourism studies, including Political Geography, Geopolitics, Space and Polity, Marine Policy, Annals of Tourism Research, and Tourism Geographies
  • Think-tank attention: noted by SWP (Germany)—Second Thomas Shoal analysis: https://www.swp-berlin.org/publikation/der-chinesisch-philippinische-konflikt-um-das-second-thomas-atoll
  • Media coverage: CNN feature on cruise tourism to the Paracel Islands
 
  • Sep 2025 – Present, Director, Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao University Alliance for Regional and Country Studies 
  • Dec 2023 – Present, Director, Marine Strategy and Security Committee, China Ocean Development Research Association 
  • Apr 2023 – Present, Member, Geographical Society of China 
  • Mar 2023 – Present, Member, European Institute of International Relations 
  • Aug 2022 – Present, Member, Political Geography Research Group, Institute of Australian Geographers 

Students

Undergraduate Research Projects Supervised
  • 2023, 14th “Zhongdi Cup” Geography Professional Skills Competition: Urban Pet Consumption Spaces and Affective Experiences: A Case Study of Cat Cafés in Guangzhou
  • 2024, 6th National Undergraduate Land Resources Survey Competition: Spatiotemporal Evolution and Influencing Factors of China–Vietnam Border Port Cities: A Comparative Study of Dongxing and Pingxiang
  • 2024, Provincial Undergraduate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program: Local Embeddedness Strategies and National Image Effects of China’s Designer Toy Industry Expanding into Southeast Asia: A Case Study of POP MART
  • 2025, Key Project of the South China Normal University “Golden Seed” Student Extracurricular Research Program: Urban Ocean: Marine Tonic Consumption in China Mediated by Digital Platforms
  • 2026, Undergraduate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program: Encountering Bajau Children in Southeast Asia: Geopolitics and Moral Practice
 

I am an idealist—sometimes pessimistic, sometimes optimistic. I hope my students are sincere, kind, courageous, resilient, and open to communication. During the relatively short journey of postgraduate study, I hope you can come to enjoy research, even if only a little, and discover that political geography can be both intellectually engaging and practically meaningful. More importantly, I hope that studying geography and politics will offer you new perspectives from which to understand the world, society, your own fate and others' lives.

Students who are interested in political geography, tourism geopolitics, China–Southeast Asia relations, territorial and border politics, maritime geopolitics, and related topics are warmly welcome to join the team.


 
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