Current Visitors at POLIS
DR RAPHAEL FEVRE
Raphaël Fèvre holds a Ph.D. in economics, major History of Economic Thought and Philosophy, from the University of Lausanne and the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. From 2012 to 2017, he was teaching and research assistant at the Walras-Pareto Centre of the University of Lausanne.
Raphaël’s Ph.D. dissertation retraces the intellectual history of German ordoliberalism (1932-1950). It focuses in particular on the epistemological and philosophical foundations of economic theory and policy recommendations, and showed that “power” was a key component in the understanding of the ordoliberal political economy as a whole. Raphaël is also interested in French neo-corporatist tendencies, and his taking part in a research group on the Economic Discipline & Expertise during the Vichy regime (EDEV).
At POLIS, Raphaël intends to extend his research to the British interwar context, especially to Cambridge’s economists. Whether in the German, French or English context, his purpose is to understand how the interwar crisis of classical liberalism, as well as the dual trend of fascination and repulsion vis-à-vis rise of authoritarian European regimes, pushed economists to enlarge their conception of economic power by looking at the overall political and juridical structure of the economy.
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 ÉLENA CHOQUETTE
Éléna Choquette is a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of POLIS. She is completing her PhD in Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her dissertation examines the settler colonial processes of land appropriation in the 19th century British Dominion of Canada. She argues that the Canadian state articulated a distinct liberal colonial ideology that authorised its territorial expansion and facilitated the production of Canadian sovereignty over these lands. Her stay at the Department of POLIS allows her to enquire into the development of liberal colonialism in other British Dominions. Alongside Dr Duncan Bell, she studies the writings of two of the most prolific and influential liberal colonial thinkers in the 19th century British colonial world: George Brown (Canada) and David Syme (State of Victoria, Australia). By studying such territorial and ideational processes from the critical and yet overlooked perspective of colonies of settlement, her research contributes to a more complete understanding of liberalism’s complicity with settler colonisation. Éléna Choquette holds a Joint Honours Bachelor of Philosophy and Political Science from McGill University as well as an MA in Political Science from the Université de Montréal.
MR PAUL BEAUMONT
Paul Beaumont is a PhD candidate at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). He received his BA in Economic History from the LSE and his MSc in International Relations from NMBU. He has previously worked as a Junior Research Fellow at The Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs, and was an English teacher for several years prior. His PhD project—The Grammar of Status Competition (working title)—investigates how status hierarchies are (re)produced and mobilised in the politics of legitimation within discrete local contexts. In particular, his research concerns the use and abuse of international indicators, nuclear politics, and 21st century migration discourse and practice. His recent publications include an article investigating the role that nostalgia and status concerns played in engendering Brexit, as well as an article exploring the status performance of the BRICS. Besides his dissertation, Paul is currently working on an edited volume that seeks to trace the emergence, maintenance and dwindling of particular status symbols within international society. He is also the co-chair of the Hierarchies in World Politics section at the forthcoming EISA conference in Sofia.
DR SAIMA KAYANI
Dr Saima A Kayani is a visiting fellow at POLIS. Dr Kayani is presently working as Head of the Department of Defense and Diplomatic Studies, Fatima Jinnah Women University Pakistan. Her research interests are focused on human security, war on terror and South and Central Asia. She regularly contributes in different research journals and participates in different national and international conferences. Dr Kayani has successfully completed different projects. She is a visiting scholar at National Defence University and Command and Staff College Pakistan. She is presently working on Strategies to counter terrorism in Pakistan. Her current research work tries to fill the gap as far as work on terrorism and Pakistan is concerned and provides a deep understanding about the topic.
DR TOMAS WEISS
Tomáš Weiss is Associate Professor and Head of Department of European Studies at Charles University, Prague. He is a member of the Scientific Council of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and a member of the editorial board of Mezinárodní vztahy / Czech Journal of International Relations. After degrees in European Studies in Hamburg and in Prague, he did his PhD at Charles University in Area Studies, analysing the changing role of police and military forces in contemporary Europe. His research focuses on European foreign and security policy, small states in the EU, Europeanisation of national foreign and defence policies, and the Czech foreign and security policy in particular.
In 2018-2019, Tomáš is a visiting researcher at the Department of Politics and International Studies and a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.
PAVATE FELLOW - Dr Amrita Jash
Dr Amrita Jash is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi. She holds a Ph.D in Chinese Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her Doctoral Thesis is titled: “China’s Perceptions of Japan: A Study of Historical Memories as an Agency, 2002-2012”. She has been a recipient of graduate fellowship by the University Grants Commission (2011-2016), GOI. She was a fellow under the "US-INDIA-CHINA Initiative" (2013), School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, a researcher under a study trip offered by the Ministry of Commerce, P.R.C., and a researcher under Harvard-Yenching-Nanching programme (2015).
Her research has appeared in nine edited books, International Journals such as East Asian Policy, Review of Global Politics, Strategic Analysis, Yonsei Journal, China Report, Maritime Affairs and Strategic Vision. She has also published in forums such as CSIS, RSIS, Huffington Post, E-IR, Asia Times, Munk School of Global Affairs, Crawford School, ISDP, China-India Brief, IPP Review, SADF, I-A Forum, Gateway House, China Focus and others. Her research interests are China’s foreign policy, strategic and security issues, China-India and China-Japan relations.
DR AGNES CHONG
Dr. Agnes Chong is a visiting scholar at POLIS. Dr. Chong is a Hong-Kong based scholar and lawyer specialising in Environmental Law, Maritime Law, Water Law and Human Rights Law in Asia. Dr. Chong obtained her PhD in international law from the University of Hong Kong. Her doctoral thesis, “The Non-Hierarchical Norms of No-Harm and Equitable Utilisation in International Watercourses Law,” was nominated for the Li Ka-Shing Prize for Outstanding Research, 2018. Prior to this, Dr. Chong obtained an LLM in Human Rights Law (Distinction) from the University of Hong Kong as well as an MSc in Development Studies (Merit) from the London School of Economics and BA in Chinese and Management Studies (Honours) from the University of Leeds. She also spent two years studying in China, at Tianjin Normal University and the John Hopkins University–Nanjing University Hopkins-Nanjing Centre.
Dr. Chong is admitted as a solicitor of the High Court of Hong Kong. She has broad professional experience in law and policy in Asia, having worked in private practice in leading international law firms in Hong Kong, where she advised on corporate finance transactions, and in international organisations, working with the United Nations and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, in Thailand and China.
Dr. Chong’s current research is focused on the UNCLOS environmental protection regime in light of the proposed amendments to the UNCLOS treaty (focused on the marine biological diversity protection of areas beyond national jurisdiction), and investigates how the proposed amendments as well as the recent body of international jurisprudence will affect the highly controversial maritime claims in the South China Sea.