Professor Philip Li is Chair Professor of Early Childhood Education. He previously held leadership positions as Dean of the Shanghai Institute of Early Childhood Education at Shanghai Normal University (SHNU), Program Director (Master) in the Macquarie School of Education at Macquarie University (MQ), and Program Director (MEd) of the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Professor Li obtained a PhD from HKU in 2000 and joined the then Hong Kong Institute of Education as a lecturer. In 2005, he rejoined HKU and worked there until 2018, when he was promoted to full professor at MQ.  He received honorary professorships at MQ and SHNU and serves as a Visiting Professor for many universities in mainland China.

Professor Li has extensive and focused research interests in the field of early childhood development and education, spanning developmental cognitive neuroscience, developmental psycholinguistics, early literacy and bilingualism, curriculum and pedagogy, educational policy, school leadership, and teacher education. He has mentored 18 doctoral students, five postdoctoral fellows and one American Fulbright visiting scholar in Australia, Hong Kong, and mainland China. He has obtained research grants from various sources, including one from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), five from the General Research Fund (three in the capacity of principal investigator and two as co-investigator), one from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, and six from the Quality Education Fund.

Professor Li has been Co-Editor of the Journal of Research in Childhood Research (JRCE) and is currently Associate Editor of four SSCI journals: Early Education and Development, Early Child Development and Care, Frontiers in Psychology, and Sustainability (education section). He also serves on the editorial board of six international peer-reviewed journals: Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, ECNU Review of Education, International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, International Journal of Early Years Education, Journal for the Study of Education and Development, and Springer-Nature Social Sciences. 

His curriculum theories and the learning packages such as SAIL (Oxford, 2004-) and SPA (Oxford, 2012-), have been widely implemented by Hong Kong kindergartens. His ‘3CAP’ theory has received scholarly attention and application from American researchers (JRCE, Issue 1, 2020). And his ‘3A2S’ theory has been extensively utilised by international scholars to critically examine education policies (Li, Park, & Chen, 2017). He has also played a significant role in early childhood education policymaking in Hong Kong and abroad. According to Google Scholar, he has a track record of 293 academic publications, including 234 journal articles, 9 books, 38 chapters, and 12 conference papers. Since 2021, he has been ranked among the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University.