Li Ding is an associate professor at the School of Sociology, Renmin University of China (RUC). He also serves as the deputy director of the Fieldwork Education Center at RUC. His main research directions include urbanization, youth development issues in the context of digitization, and urban governance issues.  

He is the author of the book Peasant Life Chances in China: Occupation Change and Citizenship Acquiring since 1970 . He has also published multiple academic papers in CSSCI core journals such as  Population Research ,  Chinese Journal of Population Science ,  Society ,  Youth Studies , and  Open Times .