She is a cultural and organizational sociologist interested in the evolution of technocratic governance as a transnational institutional model and its impact on existing forms of domination and resistance. Yan’s current book project, "Side Effects: The Transnational Doing and Undoing of AIDS Politics in China" (under contract, Oxford Studies in Culture and Politics), concerns the transformation of China’s infectious disease control driven by the conflict between transnational AIDS institutions, the state, and local activist groups. This book stems from her dissertation that won the 2014 ASA Dissertation Award. Yan was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society after obtaining her PhD in Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.