Seth Schindler is Professor of Urban Politics & Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. He researches large-scale urban and regional transformation initiatives that integrate cities into transnational urban systems. More Info.

Jessica DiCarlo is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on development, resource politics, critical minerals, infrastructure, and Global China. She was a Public Intellectual Program Fellow (National Committee for US-China Relations) and Wilson China Fellow. More Info.

Ilias Alami is Assistant Professor in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge. His interests lie in global political economy, development, state capitalism, economic geography, geographies of global finance, and articulations between race/class/coloniality. More info.

Steven Rolf is an ESRC Research Fellow at the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre at the University of Sussex. He is a political economist and examines digitalisation, transformations of work, the rise of platforms, and the territorial and political implications of these changes.  More info.

Meredith DeBoom is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver. Her research examines how Africans are engaging with geopolitical, environmental, and demographic transitions, with a focus on distributive politics, violence, ‘green’ extractivism, and low-carbon energy transitions. More info.

Lee Jones is Professor of Political Economy and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on political economy, development, security, and the transformation of states, particularly with reference to Southeast Asia and China. More info.

Agnes Gagyi is a research fellow at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Sociology and Work Studies. She focuses on East European politics & social movements from the perspective of the region’s world market and geopolitical integration. Her previous work involved comparative perspectives on economic crisis, political mobilization, and reorganization of expert knowledge. More info.

Tim Zajontz is a lecturer in International Relations and Global Political Economy at the Technische Universität Dresden, and a Research Fellow in the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch University. More info.

Imogen T. Liu is Assistant Professor of International Political Economy at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with research interests spanning state capital, financialisation, sovereign wealth funds, infrastructure, EU-China relations, and the political economy of China. She is a member of the ERC project, SWFsEUROPE, led by Adam Dixon. More info.

Shahar Hameiri is Professor of International Politics and Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. His work has examined the politics of security and development in Asia and the Pacific. He is particularly interested in state transformation and its interrelations with shifts in the global political economy. More info.

Tom Chodor is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. He focuses on the global governance of the political economy, specifically the role of private actors in global policy, and global institutions in an era of fragmentation and breakdown of world order. More info.

Emma Mawdsley is Professor of Human Geography and Fellow of Newnham College at the University of Cambridge. Her interests lie in the politics of international development, with an interest in South-South cooperation, and how this  and other national and global shifts are affecting the (so-called) 'traditional' donors. More info.

Nick Jepson is the Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Global Development Institute and School of Environment, Education and Development at the University of Manchester. He studies the political-economic implications of the rise of China and is the author of In China's Wake. More info.

Alireza  (Ali) F. Farahani has a PhD in geography from Clark University and is an independent researcher and policy analyst in urban and regional development. I am working on a proposal on Trade corridors and urban development in the age of the second cold war in West Asia: a study of border cities and peripheral urban areas in Iran and Turkey. More info.

Jack Taggart is a Lecturer in International Political Economy at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focuses on contestations in global economic governance, the geopolitics and dynamics of international development, and corporate power in global environmental politics. More Info.

Tin Hinane El Kadi is a postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford. She researches China's Digital Silk Road in North Africa. Using mixed methods, she examines how the expansion of Chinese digital capital shapes opportunities for technological upgrading in Egypt and Algeria. She a fellow at Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Programme. More info.

Julian Germann is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations (IR) at the University of Sussex. His research explores how globalisation is changing amidst growing US-China competition, with a  focus on how Europe and Germany are affected by and responding to these dynamics. More Info.

Trissia Wijaya is a McKenzie Research Fellow, Asia Institute, the University of Melbourne, and an Honorary Research Fellow at Indo-Pacific Research Centre, Murdoch University, Australia. She has PhD in Politics from Murdoch University and studies the political economy of energy transitions, infrastructure financing, and China-Indonesia relations .

Irna Hofman is a rural sociologist specialising in agrarian political economy and social change in Central Asia, and a research associate at the University of Oxford. Her research covers a range of themes: everyday geopolitics, agrarian and social change, labour, gender, and Global China and its role in global agrifood markets. More info.

Joscha Abels is a political economist and postdoc at the Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen. He focuses on infrastructure & geoeconomic competition, the global role of the EU, and the transformation of state-business relations. More info.

Shaina Potts is Associate Professor of Geography at UCLA, and an economic, legal, and political geographer with a focus on the articulation of international political economy, geopolitics, and law. More info.

Maximiliano Vila Seoane is a researcher at Argentina's National Scientific and Technical Research Council, and professor at the School of Politics & Gov’t of the National University of San Martín. His interests span cybersecurity, inter'l politics, and development. More info.

Nick Zeller is Senior Program Associate in The Carter Center's China Focus initiative and editor of The Monitor, China Focus's newsletter o the global impacts of the U.S.-China rivalry. He is an associate member of the China Research Center, an Atlanta-based China Studies collective and editor of its journal China Currents. He holds a PhD in Modern Chinese History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. More Info.

Philip Nock is a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) at the University of Bonn, where he also pursues his Ph.D. His interests include international security and technology,  US-China relations, and international order. More info.

Trym Eiterjord is a PhD student with the Geography Department at UBC. His research focuses on Chinese foreign policy and extractive activities in the global commons. He is also a Research Associate at The Arctic Institute and a Predoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute where he studies the securitization of Chinese science in the polar regions. More info.

Philippe Le Billon is political ecologist and professor at the University of British Columbia, as well as co-founder of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association. His research focuses on the geopolitics of armed conflicts, resource governance, and maritime spaces. More info.

Kang Li is a human geography PhD student at the University of Utah. His research centers on the critical study of China's global engagements in urban and infrastructural development. Before his PhD, Kang was a planning consultant for several major Belt and Road Initiative projects in Asia and Africa commissioned by Chinese SOEs.

Aaron Magunna is a PhD student at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. His research focuses on how India and Japan respond to China-US competition by adapting security, trade, and technology policies. 

Hannah McNicol is a PhD Researcher at the University of Melbourne and University of Manchester and affiliate of the Global Development Institute. She studies  Special Economic Zones in the context of China's Belt and Road Initiative and the ‘Second’ Global Cold War. More info.

Tamás Gerőcs is a political economist and historical sociologist interested in semi-peripheral development, with a focus on domestic capital in the automotive industry in Central and Eastern Europe, trade and technology, labor relations, and asymmetrical vertical specialization. He is interested in methodological questions within world-systems’, dependency and global value-chain theories.

Maximilian Mayer is Junior-Professor of International Relations and Global Politics of Technology at University of Bonn. His interests include the global politics of science, innovation, and technology; China’s foreign and energy policy; global energy and climate politics; theories of International Relations. More info.

Sean Kenji Starrs is Lecturer of International Development at King's College London. His research attempts to reconceptualize national power in the age of globalization by encompassing transnational corporate power, with particular attention to hegemonic competition between China and the United States, including over advanced technology. More info

Aaditee Kudrimoti is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group and Urban Planning at UC Berkeley, interested in the influence of major themes in global politics on the subnational politics of planning natural resource-intensive sectors. Her recent work explores the relationship between U.S.-China competition and energy sector planning in Southeast Asia. More info.

Umesh Moramudali is a PhD student at the Global Development Institute (GDI), University of Manchester. His research mostly focuses on Chinese loans, Chinese SOEs and intersection with sovereign debt crises. He has done extensive research work on Chinese lending to Sri Lanka, and myth of Chinese debt trap and has been a contributor to the International Affairs Journal and China- Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at the John Hopkins University. More info

Marcelo I. Saguier is Professor of International Relations & Director of the MA-PhD in the School of Politics & Government, National University of San Martin, and a Research Fellow at Argentina’s National Scientific & Technical Research Council. He researches the international political economy of the environment and visual politics of sustainability and extractivism in Latin America. More info.

Kevin Ward is Professor of Human Geography and Director of the Manchester Urban Institute. He is an urban geographer with interests in the financing and governance of cities. More info.

Mingchun Xu is a PhD researcher in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. She explores the geopolitics of South-South development cooperation with a focus on China. Her PhD dissertation looks at China’s role in the BRICS+ and the group’s the economic and political implications for the global South. More info.

Pedro Bastos is Professor and Chair of Socioeconomic Development at the Institute of Economics of the State University of Campinas. He was a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley (2017-18), President of the Brazilian Association of Economic History Researchers (2009 -11), and Director of the Brazilian Society of Political Economy (2005-07). More info.

Richard Heeks is Professor of Digital Development and Director of the Centre for Digital Development at the University of Manchester.  His research interests include China’s digital expansion in the Global South, digital transformation, data justice and digital equity. More info

Selver B. Sahin is a professor of Political Science and IR at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She has more than fifteen years of teaching, research and project management experience gained in Türkiye, Australia and New Zealand. Her research focuses on the socio-political dynamics of development. More info.

Miklós Sebők is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Social Sciences,  Budapest. He studies political economy in Central and Eastern Europe. His work has appeared in, inter alia, Business and Politics, East European Politics, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Public Policy & Socio-Economic Review.

Maddie Craig-Scheckman is a PhD candidate in Public Policy at Northeastern University and NBR Chinese Language Fellow at National Taiwan University. Her research examines how Second Cold War dynamics reshape global supply chains for clean energy technologies. With field experience across Southeast Asia and Latin America, she brings a global lens to infrastructure development, critical mineral policy, and energy governance.

Jaša Veselinovič is a postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, working on geopolitical drivers of the EU’s attempts at technological derisking and decoupling from China. His research interests include critical international political economy, geopolitics and geoeconomics, US foreign policy, think tanks, and the EU.

Sirma Altun is an Assistant Prof. at Ankara University, Department of Politics and Economics. Her research interests lie in IPE, environmental & digital transformations, political economy of China & East Asia, Europe-China relations. More info.

Joseph Baines is a Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at King’s College London. His work principally focusses on corporate power in global supply chains. He has produced research on areas such as the agri-food system, commodity trading, corporate debt, corporate taxation, financialization, and the tech conflict. More Info.

Debolina Majumder is an ESRC research fellow at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. She researches everyday urban political economy, labour migration, social reproduction, and the role of surplus populations and essential workers in urban development in the Delhi NCR. 

Paolo Balmas is Research Fellow at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research. An economic geographer, his research interests lie at the intersections of the geographies of money and finance, (development) banking, and geopolitics. His main research focus is China’s global economic expansion, and China’s gradual integration in the global financial system.

Giorgian Guțoiu is a teaching assistant in sociology at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Bucharest. His interests lie in the geopolitics and geoeconomics of urbanization, climate change, and state capitalism, and how these unfold, particularly in Eastern Europe.

Ceren Ergenc is a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies and an affiliated researcher at the East Asian Studies and Research Centre, Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her research interests include China's domestic and international policy processes, China’s investments in the greater European area, industrial policymaking, participatory governance, and urban politics. More Info.

Eduardo Viola is Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Univaersity of Sao Paulo, and Professor of IR at University of Brasilia. He researches International Political Economy of Climate Change, globalization & governance, Brazilian foreign policy. He has published seven books and over eighty peer-reviewed articles, with more than 6,800 citations . More Info.

Weila Gong is a political scientist and author of Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities (Oxford, 2025). She studies the politics and policy of low-carbon transitions. She has over ten years of experience working with academic and non-academic institutes on climate and environmental politics and policy. She was a Climate Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. More info.

Samuel Rogers is a political economist and Visiting Fellow at the School of Social Sciences & Global Studies, The Open University. His research focuses on (1) the capitalist development of illiberalism, (2) the political economy of infrastructure development, and (3) the political economy of derisking. More Info.

Minran Liu is a Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. His teaching and research focus on Asia-Pacific security, East Asian politics, Chinese politics and strategy. More info.

Tetiana Vodotyka is a historian of Ukrainian urban and business history. She established the e-journal Urban Studies, City: History, Culture, Society, and is its chief editor. She was a guest researcher at the University of Göttingen (2022–2023) and Durham University (2023–2025), and Academic Director of the Master's programme in Urban Studies and Post-War Reconstruction at Kyiv School of Economics, where she leads the Urban Research Center.  More info.

Johannes Petry is a political economist at Goethe University Frankfurt researching the changing dynamics of financial globalization and its impact on global norms, institutions, and governance. His focus is on the internationalisation of China's financial system, the politics of market infrastructures, and the rise of Asia, BRICS, and new financial actors. His research centers great power competition and its impact on the geopolitics of global finance. More info

Louis Cyuzuzo is a president's doctoral scholar at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on  Chinese and Japanese-led port  projects: the Lamu Port and the Dongo Kundu SEZ, in Lame and Mombasa, Kenya. The project offers a comparative study through a close analysis of their effects on the two cities and how urban agglomerations affect projects. More info.

Mustafa Bayırbağ is an urban planner and professor of Political Science, Urban Policy, and Local Government Graduate Program at the Middle East Technical University. His interests lie at the intersection of urban/regional studies and public policy. State spatiality and the political economy of social exclusion cut across his research on urbanization, state rescaling, urban governance, the BRI, and development. More info.

Albert Sanghoon Park is a Lecturer at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. He specialises in the geopolitics of knowledge production, tying academic and policy ideas to their surrounding political and material contexts. His current project examines the geopolitics of resilience related to environmental and economic security. More info.