We are thrilled to welcome Han Cheng to De:link//Re:link’s International Advisory Board. His research examines contemporary China’s global engagement, with a focus on China–Africa relations and the BRI. We are looking forward to plenty of exciting collaborations over the coming months. Below is a short biography of Han from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, where is currently a senior researcher.
Dr. Han Cheng is a senior research scholar in the Lise Meitner Research Group “China in the Global System of Science” and an adjunct professor at Université Laval’s Graduate School of International Studies. He serves as a principal investigator for the Volkswagen Foundation-funded project “China’s Science Silk Road and the New Geopolitics of Knowledge Production”. Together with Anna Lisa Ahlers (MPIWG) and Hang Zhou (Laval), he co-leads one of the first in-depth analyses of China’s international cooperation on science, technology and innovation under the BRI.
Han holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge and has been a visiting fellow at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Previously, he was a tenured professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a research fellow at the National University of Singapore. He began his career in government and has consulted for international policy organizations, including the UN, the EU, and the UK Government. His research has been supported by the Cambridge Trust, the Royal Geographical Society, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the Max Weber Foundation.
Han is an editor of Dialogues in Human Geography and a member of the editorial board of Political Geography. He is also involved in the field of Global China Studies, serving as an Editor of The People’s Map of Global China / Global China Pulse and on the global advisory board of the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network.