From 2012 to 2013, Professor Lu was a postdoctoral visiting scholar at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, UK. In 2018 she was a visiting scholar at the East Asia and Southeast Asia Research Center of Lund University, Sweden.
In recent years, her research has focused on development interventions and community change as well as South-South migration, especially Chinese migrants in Africa and African migrants in China.
She has published over 40 articles on international and national journals, including top ones like World Development, Foreign Affairs Review (Chinese).