Diana Yeh

Yeh has been a notable activist in campaigning for racial equality in the United Kingdom, often speaking on radio and television as an expert in the field of race and racism. She has been featured on BBC Radio Four[6][7] Channel 5,[8] and Resonance FM.[9]

In February 2020, in the face of increasing overt racism against East and Southeast Asian people fuelled by international Sinophobia and racist rhetoric from political leaders such as Donald Trump,[10] Yeh co-organised a nationwide UK campaign #IWillEatWithYou to help fight racist attitudes which were effecting Chinese businesses, particularly restaurants and takeaways. The campaign called on the public to show support and solidarity with East and Southeast Asian business owners by ordering food from their outlets.[11] She is one of the key activists behind the #endthevirusofracism campaign that began in May 2020, and which formed into a London-based non-profit organisation focused on addressing racism against East and Southeast Asian people in the United Kingdom.[12] The group formed after Britain's East and Southeast Asian communities saw a 300-percent increase in racist abuse and hate crime following the outbreak of Covid 19.[13]

In September 2020, Yeh was also one of many key activists behind the #BAMEover campaign by IncArts,[14] which called on the end of the use of BAME (Black, Asian, or other Minority Ethnic), as official terminology to describe people who were non-white.[15]

As a sociologist, Yeh's contribution to contemporary discourse focuses on issues within race and racisms studies, covering issues and debates around migration and diaspora, particularly in relation the identities of British Chinese and East Asian people. Her work is often related to youth and young people, and the cultural politics of second and third generation migrants.[16] An example of this is the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust funded project titled ‘Becoming East and Southeast Asian: Race, Ethnicity and Youth Politics of Belonging’ for which Yeh is principal investigator.[17] The project archives and examines the experiences of young people being racialised as East Asian in the United Kingdom, exploring their social spaces and their sense of belonging in a so-called ‘superdiverse’ Britain.[18]

Yeh is known for her examination of ‘British Chinese-ness’ and for presenting it as a complex multiplicity involving multiple subjectivities, identities and politics. Yeh argues that there is not yet a syncretic sense of British Chinese culture, and that British Chinese culture is not a fusion of British and Chinese identities but is instead often a conflict between the two national identities.[19] She has argued that the term 'British Chinese' is often utilised as a means to negotiate social spaces from which one may be rejected as not "British" or "Chinese" enough. As such it offers agency as an identity that can be considered alongside the more visible identities of Black Britons or British Asian ethnic groups.[20]

In an article from 2021, Yeh describes the emergence of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) identities in Britain as part of a wider political, anti-racist movement.[21]

Regarded as a leading expert on British Chinese Arts[1] she has been credited for conducting original fieldwork on identity politics of British Chinese and Chinese migrant contemporary artists across art forms.[16][22] Since 2019, along with film-maker Rosa Fong, she has been involved with BEAST: British East Asians on Screen and in Television, which confronts racial inequalities in the film and cultural industries.[23] This work resulted in a series of new short films produced by ITV and the British Film Institute, inspired by research interviews that Yeh had previously conducted on racial inequality in the film and television industries.[24] Her work has also featured in cultural venues such as the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain.[16]

Yeh was previously lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, the University of East London,[25] and the University of Winchester.[26] She also acted as a specialist consultant at London's Royal Geographical Society.[16]