LI 
Sitao

 
NUS Law Laureate Fellow

Sitao Li is a Laureate Fellow at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. His research focuses on the sociology of law, criminal justice, and the Chinese legal system. His dissertation examines legal and penal practices in lower courts in China. His work has been published in leading law reviews and social science journals, including Law & Society Review, British Journal of Criminology, Annual Review of Sociology, and Hong Kong Law Journal.

FULL BIOGRAPHY

Contact

sitao.li@nus.edu.sg
(65) 6516-1862
FED 02-31

Education

Ph.D. in Sociology

Sitao Li is a Laureate Fellow at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. His research interests include sociology of law, criminal justice, and the Chinese legal system. Drawing on ethnographic methods, his dissertation examines the everyday legal and penal practices in lower courts in China. In addition, he also writes on theories of punishment and conducts research on Chinese legal professions.

His research has been published in leading law and social science journals, including Law & Society Review, British Journal of Criminology, Annual Review of Sociology, and Hong Kong Law Journal. He received the 2023 Graduate Student Article Award from the Asian Law & Society Association (ALSA).

Sitao holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto, a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and a B.A. in Political Science from UC Berkeley.

Li, Sitao. 2025. “Procedural Violence in the Courtroom of Chinese Criminal Justice.” British Journal of Criminology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf043

Li, Sitao. 2023. “Face-Work in Chinese Routine Criminal Trials.” Law & Society Review 57(2): 254–275. (Winner, 2023 Asian Law & Society Association Graduate Student Article Award)

Liu, Sida, and Sitao Li. 2024. “Rights in China: Myths, Abuses, and Politics.” Annual Review of Sociology 50: 737–755.

Liu, Sida, Yun Xian, and Sitao Li. 2024. “China’s Pragmatic Approach to International Human Rights Law.” UC-Irvine Journal of International, Transnational, and Comparative Law 9(1): 46–76.

Liu, Sida, and Sitao Li. 2023. “How to Do Empirical Legal Studies without Numbers?” Hong Kong Law Journal 53(3): 1261–1276.


  • Law and Society
  • Criminal Justice
  • Chinese Legal System
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