Dr Chunyuan Gao is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, at ANU from July 2024 until July 2025.

Dr Gao obtained his PhD in International, Political, and Strategic Studies from The Australian National University. He received both his Bachelor and MPhil degrees in Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research primarily focuses on poverty, social assistance, and migration.

As a mixed-methods researcher, Dr Gao has expertise in a variety of research methodologies and tools. His PhD project involved an in-depth qualitative field study and sophisticated quantitative analyses of national survey data on migrant poverty in China.

From 2016 to 2018, he was a core member of a World Bank project team focused on the targeting mechanism in social assistance, which was a sub-project of World Bank TCC6 titled ‘Economic Transformation and Institutional Capacity Building.’ More recently, he has provided research consultation, assistance, and training for several prestigious institutions and organisations, including ANU, ACU, the Shanghai Social Worker Agency for Public Affairs, and the Hong Kong Federation of Youth.