Staff profile

Yaoqi Zheng is a PhD candidate in law at Durham Law School. She has been a Recognised Student, Tutor in Law, and Junior Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford from 2024 to 2025. Since 2023, she has served as an expert for the World Bank's Women, Business, and the Law Group, contributing to the 2023, 2024, and 2026 reports.

Current Research

Yaoqi’s doctoral research adopts feminist legal methodology to inquire about the role of law for women in finance. It deploys feminist legal methods to examine how UK law can be improved to help women claim equal job opportunities in the financial industry and how the UK law can incentivise institutional investors to promote women's interests in general. This research expands the repertoire of feminist legal scholarship by extending feminist methods to finance and is expected to have broader theoretical implications. 

Publications

Y Zheng, 'Assessing UK Law Through the Concept of Gender Lens Investing' The Securities Regulation Law Journal (SSCI) (forthcoming in Spring 2026 edition) (12,172 words)

Y Zheng, 'Enterprise litigation risk, executive characteristics and corporate foreign investment', Finance Research Letters (SSCI) 86 (2025) 108819

Y Zheng, 'Establishment of environment protection courts, green finance, and corporate operating performance' Finance Research Letters (SSCI) 90 (2026) 109301

Contributed to Women, Business, and the Law 2023, 2024, and 2026 regarding financial inclusion, labour law, the implementation of the law, entrepreneurship, and other new research questions regarding UK businesswomen; recognised with a Certificate of Appreciation from the World Bank.

 

Conferences and Presentations

'Feminist Legal Methodology in Finance', Socio-Legal Discussion Group, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 2024

'Feminist Understanding in Finance'. Feminism, Law and Citizenship II, University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France, 2024

'Assessing UK Law Through the Concept of Gender Lens Investing', Commercial Law Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 2024 

'Women and Capital' Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) 2023 Annual Conference, Oxford, UK, 2023

'Women in finance and the UN's sustainable development goals of gender equality' the Launch event of the Durham Centre for Sustainable Development Law and Policy, Durham, UK, 2023

Impact

Yaoqi has been listed in the experts pool of the Women, Business, and the Law Group at the Development Economics Vice Presidency of the World Bank. Yaoqi is the first person from academia in the United Kingdom.

 

Research Interests

Sustainable Finance

Corporate Governance

Feminist Legal Theory and Methodology

Law and Economics

Journal Article

• Enterprise litigation risk, executive characteristics and corporate foreign investment
  
  Zheng, Y. (2025). Enterprise litigation risk, executive characteristics and corporate foreign investment. Finance Research Letters, 86, Article 108819. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2025.108819