President and Research Director

Dr. Nele Noesselt (Ph.D., University of Vienna) holds the Chair for Political Science with a special focus on China/ East Asia (W3) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany). Since 2017, she is the speaker of the recently opened AREA Graduate School on Transnational East Asian Studies. In 2018, she got appointed to the international advisory board of the book series Bristol Studies in East Asian International Relations (Bristol University Press). Her research focuses on governance issues in China as well as China’s role in world affairs. Before joining the University of Duisburg-Essen, she worked as a post-doc research fellow at the GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, where she also acted as speaker of the GIGA research team on Comparative Regionalism Studies.

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President-Elect and Publicity Director

Dr. Xi Chen (Ph.D., Virginia Tech) is currently a fellow at the John G. Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs at Southern Methodist University. Dr. Chen was an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Asian Studies Minor Program at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). She specializes in International Politics with a focus on China. She obtained her Doctoral degree in Planning, Governance, and Globalization from Virginia Tech and M.A. in Applied Linguistics from China Foreign Affairs University. Dr. Chen’s primary research and teaching interests include Asian Politics, Chinese Politics, Media and Politics, Global Security, and International Relations.

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Treasurer

Yumin Sheng

Dr. Yumin Sheng (Ph.D., Princeton University) is an associate professor of political science at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. His research interests are economic globalization and domestic politics, federalism and decentralization, regional political representation and resource redistribution, and civil-military relations under authoritarianism, with a focus on contemporary China. He is the author of Economic Openness and Territorial Politics in China (2010) and articles in the British Journal of Political Science, China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and Studies in Comparative International Development.

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Membership Director

Dr. Dan Chen (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Richmond. Her research focuses on media politics, public opinion, local governance and cultural politics in China. She is the author of Convenient Criticism: Local Media and Governance in Urban China (SUNY Press, 2020). In addition to articles published in International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Political Research Quarterly, the China Quarterly, Modern China, Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and others. Dr. Chen is a Public Intellectuals Program(PIP) fellow with the National Committee on United States-China Relations (NCUSCR). In 2018, she was a visiting fellow at the China Studies Center, the University of Sydney.

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Secretary

James Paradise

Dr. James F. Paradise (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles) is an assistant professor at Yonsei University in the Republic of Korea. He specializes in international political economy, with particular reference to China. Among his publications are “Power Through Participation: The Case of China and New Multilateral Development Banks” (Korean Political Science Review, 2017), “The Role of ‘Parallel Institutions’ in China’s Growing Participation in Global Economic Governance” (Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2016), “The New Intellectual Property Rights Environment in China: Impact of WTO Membership and China’s ‘Innovation Society’ Makeover” (Asian Journal of Social Science, 2013) and “China and International Harmony: The Role of Confucius Institutes in Bolstering Beijing’s Soft Power” (Asian Survey, 2009). He is currently doing research on China’s tourism statecraft, the U.S.-South Korea alliance, and the institutionalization of Asian monetary cooperation.

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