Current Visitors at POLIS
VISITING FELLOWS
DR CHARLES I-HSIN CHEN
Dr Charles I-hsin Chen is a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at POLIS. He is also a research associate in the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS, University of London. He received his BA in politics from National Taiwan University, MSc in development studies and PhD in economics from SOAS in 2014. His doctoral thesis identifies the driving forces behind the mass privatisation of Chinese state-owned enterprises from the late 1990s. Charles served as the spokesman of Taiwan's Presidential Office (2015-16), and the spokesman and director of international affairs in the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party (2014-15). His research interest covers a wide range of topics in China’s economic reform in the state sector, Taiwan’s party politics and election campaigns, cross-Strait political and economic relations, and the sovereignty disputes in the East and South China Seas. His current programme in the Centre for Rising Powers is to examine the legal and political impacts brought by the South China Sea arbitration on the formation of maritime governance in the South China Sea. He has over a hundred writings of editorials, columns, commentaries and letters published on Taiwan and international newspapers on various topics in recent years.
DR DIEGO MAGALHAES
Diego Trindade d'Ávila Magalhães is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Federal University of Goias, Brazil, currently on research leave as Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK, Department of Politics and International Studies, and, previously, Visiting Scholar at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Institute for Asian and African Studies. He received his BA and MS in International Relations from the University of Brasilia, and his PhD in International Strategic Studies from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Dr Magalhães created the theory of globaliser to assess the power of countries over globalisation and, currently, develops research about how China changes globalisation, considering economic, environmental and military dimensions. In 2018, he published the articles “The globaliser dragon: how is China changing economic globalisation?” and "New Globaliser in the Hood: How is China Globalising the Brazilian Economy?". He is interested in collaborating with researchers focusing on globalisation and emerging powers.
VISITING SCHOLARS
DR GENTIAN ELEZI
Gentian Elezi is a director at the research institute Agenda in Albania and a lecturer in European Politics. His previous experiences include serving as Vice Minister of European integration in the Albanian government and working as a consultant in EU affairs in the Balkan region. He holds a PhD in Politics and an MA in European Politics, both from the University of Sussex, UK. He obtained his BA in Political Science in the University of Milan, Italy. During his career he has directed and participated in several research projects.
Dr Elezi is a visiting scholar affiliated with the Department of Politics and International Relations, at the University of Cambridge. His research at POLIS focuses on the role of domestic politics of EU member states in the Enlargement policy
DR MARTIN JACQUES
Martin Jacques is the author of the global best-seller When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. It was first published in 2009 and has since been translated into fifteen languages and sold 350,000 copies. The book has been shortlisted for two major literary awards. A second edition of the book, greatly expanded and fully updated, was published in 2012. His TED talk on how to understand China has had over 2 million views. He is a Senior Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC.
He has previously been a Visiting Professor at Renmin University, the International Centre for Chinese Studies, Aichi University, Nagoya, and Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. He was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He was until recently a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at IDEAS, a centre for diplomacy and grand strategy, and a fellow at the Asia Research Centre, both at the London School of Economics. He was formerly the editor of the renowned London-based monthly Marxism Today until its closure in 1991 and was co-founder of the think-tank Demos. He has been a columnist for many newspapers, made many television programmes and is a former deputy editor of The Independent newspaper. He took his doctorate while at King’s College, Cambridge.
He has been invited to give lectures at many of the world’s top universities including Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, UCLA, USC, Cambridge, Oxford, Peking, Tsinghua, Renmin, NUS, Tokyo, University of Hong Kong, amongst many others. He has given talks to many corporate clients including Bank of America, BlackRock, Pictet, Shell, Allianz, BNP Paribas, Financial Times, British Telecom, BBC, HR50, Amerada Hess, Investec, DSM and Khazanah.
DR QIFU LIN
Qifu Lin, is a visiting scholar at POLIS from September 2017 to September 2018 which funded by the China Scholarship Council. His academic interests focus on western political thought from sixteen to late-nineteenth century, theories of political representation and the politics of the Chinese People’s Congress. He is a professor and chairman in the Department of Political Science, School of Public Administration at Jilin University. He holds a Ph.D. in Politics, obtained from Jilin University in China.
DR HANNA PFEIFER
Hanna Pfeifer is a visiting post-doctoral scholar at POLIS and a research associate at the Institute of International Politics at Helmut Schmidt University / the University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg where she also gained her PhD (2017). She studied at the University of Munich and Sciences Po (Institut d’Etudes Politiques) Paris and holds a Magister Artium (2012) in Politics, Philosophy and Mathematics.
Her main research interests are the transforming world order and the role of Arab states and non-state actors in challenging, reproducing and reinventing global order. Her PhD research dealt with Islamist discursive constructions of world order and how they relate to Western, liberal concepts. At POLIS, she will work on recent military interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly focusing on the aspect of democratic-autocratic cooperation. Hanna’s research is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
PROF BENEDIKT STUCHTEY
Benedikt Stuchtey is professor and chair of modern history at the University of Marburg, Germany. For the past three years he has been dean of the faculty, and he has previously held visiting professorships at the universities of Basel (Switzerland) and at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Between 2004 and 2013 he was deputy director of the German Historical Institute in London. His research focuses on the history of West European, particularly British colonialism and imperialism. At POLIS Benedikt is writing a book on the materiality of the European colonial expansion between 1750 and 1950, and he is also working on the concept of a general history of the British Empire.
DR C J JENNER
Christopher John Jenner is First Sea Lord Fellow; Research Associate, Centre of Geopolitics and Grand Strategy, University of Cambridge; Research Fellow, King’s College London; and Senior Research Fellow, Institute for China-America Studies. He holds Master of Studies and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Modern History from the University of Oxford.
He has won various awards and fellowships: Economic and Social Research Council Fellow, University of Oxford; Research Fellow, Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies, Joint Services Command and Staff College, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom; Research Fellow, New England Centre and Home for Veterans; Research Fellow, St Cross College, University of Oxford; Research and Teaching Fellow, University of London; Research Fellow, University of Massachusetts; Research Fellow, William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences; and Visiting Research Fellow, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam (Học viện Ngoại giao Việt Nam), Hanoi.
At Cambridge, he is leading two international research projects: (i) an investigation of sea power’s influence on relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America, 1949-1996; and (ii) an account of the conception and formative conduct of the unique alliance between the cryptographic services of Great Britain and the United States, 1940-1943. In addition to his academic work, Dr Jenner undertakes governmental analytical commissions, and has contributed to award-winning television series.