I am a data scientist at the Department of Behavioural Science and Health in University College London (UCL) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health.

As a sociologist, I have always been enthusiastic about the society and endeavour to make a difference in the world. In particular, I am committed to improving wellbeing at a whole population level through increasing the participation rate of arts and cultural community activities which have been evidently shown to have wellbeing benefits. Therefore, in my career, I conduct quantitative research using UK large-scale and nationally representative data to explore how arts and cultural activities are associated with improvements in people’s wellbeing (e.g. self-esteem, life satisfaction, anxiety, depression). In addition, I investigate the profile of engagers across the UK and identify enablers vs barriers to engagements to help improve equality in accessing the arts and culture. My work has been featured in the WHO, Arts Council England, Historic England, What Works Centre for Wellbeing, and the Social Prescribing Network.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, I joined the UCL Covid-19 Social Study team (one of the largest UK studies with 70,000+ respondents) and led on 43 regular reports, which had been used to inform the UK government, Public Health England and NHS England. I have also researched on the engagements in home-based arts activities and identified the patterns and predictors of the engagements during national lockdowns.