Prof. Liu graduated from the National University of Singapore and has been with the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University since 2013. He currently serves as Assistant Dean of the School and holds the title of Yat-sen Pioneer Scholar. His research spans regional studies, globalization, industrial upgrading, and AI/big data applications, across the interdisciplinary fields of economic geography, tourism management, and information systems. He is widely recognized as a leading scholar in strategic coupling within economic geography and sentiment analysis in tourism.
To date, Prof. Liu has published over 100 articles in both Chinese and English in highly influential journals, including Nature Climate Change (IF 31), Annals of Tourism Research, Regional Studies, and Review of International Political Economy. In addition, his work on tourism-led poverty alleviation has received significant recognition. He was awarded the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China three times (2018, 2022, and 2023). His initiatives in tourism-driven poverty alleviation in rural China, particularly the “Fengqing Plan,” were honored with the Best Practices in Rural Revitalisation Through Tourism Award by the World Tourism Alliance in 2022, and the Global Best Poverty Reduction Practices Award in 2023 jointly by the International Poverty Reduction Centre in China, the World Bank, and four other UN-affiliated institutions. In March 2026, the “Fengqing Plan” was further recognized as a Model Project of Poverty Assistance by the Ministry of Education of China.
Building on these achievements, Prof. Liu has been actively engaged in academic service. He serves as Chief Secretary of the Commission on Tourism Geography of the Geographical Society of China, and Chief Secretary of the Tourism Poverty Alleviation Alliance under the Ministry of Education of China. He is also Vice Editor-in-Chief of Tourism Forum (Chinese) and Associate Editor of Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Springer Nature). In March 2026, he was nominated as a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association (RSA), becoming the third scholar from China to receive this distinction. For more information, please visit his personal webpage or ResearchGate profile:
https://stm.sysu.edu.cn/teacher/LiuYi
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yi_Liu156