Li Tang is a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. She received her BA in archaeology from Shandong University and her MA in archaeology from Sichuan University. Her work focuses on the development of paleoeconomy on the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding regions.

Li is particularly interested in knowing when people switched to a more barley-centric system and what role dairy products played through time. Her doctoral research project takes a diachronic approach to the adaptations of humans to one of the most extreme ecologies on Earth. She is studying macrobotanical remains and using both proteomics and isotopes to understand changes in the economy over time.