Mengya Li is a doctoral candidate at the Chair for Democracy Research and Public Governance at the University of Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Daniel Kübler, starting in November 2023. She obtained her bachelor's and master's degrees in Public Administration in China.

Her research interests lie in decarbonization, collaborative governance, and central-local government interactions in China. Her dissertation focuses on policy innovation and the co-production process within China’s low-carbon pilot city program, using a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative modeling and qualitative case studies.