With a strong concern for social justice and fairness, Yingru seeks to generate insights with both theoretical depth and policy relevance, contributing to how accounting and accountability practice can support more just, transparent, and sustainble forms of economic and organizational life.

Yingru’s research sits at the intersection of accounting, governance, and human rights. She is interested in how accountability is theorised, constructed, contested, politicised and practised across diverse institutional and organisational contexts. Her ongoing projects examine the role of national human rights institutions in promoting business respect for human rights, public responses to accountability during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, the lived experiences and struggles of labourers in the Global South, and the moral and epistemic challenges faced by independent human rights advocates. Across these studies, she explores how accounting tools and accountability practices can both empower and disempower actors, and whose voices are heard—or silenced—in processes of change and reform.

Beyond academia, Yingru collaborates with third-sector organisations and professional bodies to promote accounting’s role in advancing ethical practice, societal impact, and public value.

Yingru is a member of the School's Accounting research cluster and is also co-convenor of the Glasgow Human Rights Network.

Areas of expertise:

• Human rights and business 
• Justice and justification in business and accounting
• Corporate accountability 
• Critical accounting
• Financial accounting and reporting
• The politics of standard setting

List by: Type | Date

2024 - "Advocating for Scottish Independent Advocacy” (Co-I, £11,820), funded by the Research Incentive Grant, The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland

2023 - “What are “material” human rights issues in non-financial reporting practice?” (PI, £1500), by PRME seed research funding

2022 - Awarded with Dekaban-Liddle Junior Fellowship (£12,100) to develop research collaborations with Polish institutions on corporate accountability for human rights issues

2020 - "China’s responses to Covid-19" (Co-I, £333,963), funded by the UKRI Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research

2019 - "The role of National Human Rights Institutions in promoting human rights within private sectors" (PI, £14,224.95), funded by the Research Incentive Grant, The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland

Yingru is interested in supervising projects exploring accountability practices emerged and constructed in different contexts and networks:

• Platform accountability and network politics
• Corporate accountability, human rights and sustainability issues
• Individual felt accountability
• Politics around standard setting

She is also very interested in the moral and political conceptualization of accountability, and welcomes topics that look into justice and equality related issues in corporate world.

• Accountability and human rights (honours course)
• Accounting, image and power (honours course)
• Human rights and business (PGT course)

Podcasts

"Social Issues" of ESG in accounting education, Educate Me! podcasts by the European Accounting Association, 2024

Blogs

• Duckett et al., Mar 2020, “China’s new coronavirus recovery strategy explained”, The Conversation 
• Snape et al., June 2020, “Coronavirus: Beijing Outbreak shows China’s plan for preventing a second wave”, The Conversation
• Li and Duckett, Nov 2020, “What can the West learn from China about keeping campuses Covid-free?”, Times Higher Education

Research briefings

• Snape et al., May 2020, “What can China’s delayed ‘Two Sessions’ tell us about its Covid-19 ‘Normalization’ policy?”
• Li et al., May 2020, “China’s provincial ‘Two Sessions’ and Covid-19: Adaptations and Continued Vigilance” MEDIA REPORTS