Dr. Yuan Zhou is a senior researcher in the Social Transitions Research Group. Her interdisciplinary research spans agricultural policy, environmental economics, and climate-resilient food systems. She is now increasingly focused on corporate social responsibility and sustainability transformations, particularly how public, private, and civil society actors can collaborate to drive environmental and social change.

Her earlier research addressed water resources management and agricultural innovation, as well as food policy, payments for ecosystem services, and regional policy harmonization across Asia and Africa. Before joining the University of Basel, she worked for years as a global program and policy leader at a nonprofit organization focused on sustainable agriculture, building a career at the intersection of research, policy, and fieldwork. More recently, she applied that same policy perspective to global health, contributing to work related to health economics and value assessment. Earlier still, she was a researcher at Eawag. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Economics from the University of Hamburg.

Her academic publications can be found on ResearchGate.