Yuan received her Ph.D. in literature from the Department of Chinese Language & Literature at Fudan University. She is an associate professor at the School of International Chinese Studies of ECNU, specializing in experimental phonetics, Chinese dialectology and sociolinguistics. She has published one monograph and more than 20 papers in domestic and international journals, such as the Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Studies of the Chinese Language, Linguistic Sciences, Dialect, and Essays on Linguistics. She was the second prize winner of the 3rd Luo Changpei Linguistics Award of Chinese Linguistics Society and received a grant from the 2020 Shanghai Pujiang Talent Program.