Zikun Yang

Thesis Title: Rising Powers and Norm Containment: Examining Variation in China’s Attitudes towards Liberal International Norms

Biography

Zikun Yang is a PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations. She is interested in rising powers’ competitive socialization and their contribution to the evolution of liberal international norms and law, with a specific focus on diplomatic history and treaty negotiation. Her dissertation project examines China’s counterintuitive commitment to sovereignty-compromising Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from the 1980s to 2020s. She supervises undergraduate papers on international organizations (POL 3), US foreign policy (POL 14), and Chinese politics (ICE Unit 3) for both POLIS and the Institute of Continuing Education at Cambridge.

Before starting her PhD, Zikun has worked as the research assistant for various think tanks (the Woodrow Wilson Center), university (Tsinghua University), and law firms. She holds an MPhil in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge, and a dual-BA with honor in International Relations and Law, History, and Culture from the University of Southern California.