Lina Song is a Professor at Division of Industrial Economics and Finance, Nottingham University Business School. She has conducted economic and social research on developing countries. Her recently completed projects include “Poverty, Migration and Public Health”; “Explaining China’s Economic Growth with Enterprise Data”; "Economic Inequality and Socio-political Instability in China". She leads an ESRC funded project titled "Local government, economic growth and human development: Chinese lessons for Kenya and Uganda?"

She is the Winner of Richard A. Lester Prize for “the Outstanding Book in Labour Economics and Industrial Relations published in 2005” and has published broadly. Areas of expertise include the design and conduct of fieldwork, and the use advanced statistical method (mainly econometrics) to analyse data. She is committed to original data collection, and has led or participated in over 10 field-surveys in China, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Kenya.

She has successfully supervised PhD students on topics including: privatisation of Chinese State-owned enterprises; urban livelihoods of the laid-off unemployed in China; rural industrialisation and small town development in China; corporate social responsibility and firms’ performance in China; combining paid-work and lone motherhood: a longitudinal study of employment retention and advancement. She has research students working on topics of women and labour market in Sudan; migration and health in China; the development of urban welfare in China.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2008.