Principal Consultant specialising in China-focused due diligence, macro advisory, and risk management. He directs and executes research that supports China-focused advisory, due diligence, and risk mitigation. He works with leading global advisory firms to deliver value to clients in the finance and investment, fund management, financial services, energy, and higher education. Previously he led the creation of new degree programs and partnerships in arts, social sciences, and professional studies for a private education group based in Kuala Lumpur and served on the board of the Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange.

Graduate of Harvard University (AB honors, Social Studies – international relations and political economy of development) and the University of California, San Diego (MPhil, PhD, History – modern China and East Asia). As a doctoral student he spent three years in China as a Jacob K. Javits fellow and U.S. Fulbright fellow, and was affiliated with Peking University. From 2008 to 2010 Dr. Johnson was departmental lecturer in the history and politics of modern China at the University of Oxford and post-doctoral researcher with the Leverhulme Trust-supported China’s War with Japan programme. He has edited and published several books, including Maoism at the Grassroots (Harvard University Press, 2015), and authored 80+ articles, chapters, reference entries, and online resources.

Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor of Public Diplomacy, School of International Studies at the University of Nottingham in China.

Founding Dean of UNNC and first Professor and Head of International Studies (2005-7) Returned to the University as Dean of Humanities and Social Science and Professor of Public Diplomacy.

Taught for 12 years in the School of Politics at the University of Nottingham. Following a two years secondment to UNNC, he became Professor of International Communication and Head of the Institute of Communications Studies at the University of Leeds, before joining Aberystwyth University in 2013 as Professor of Public Diplomacy in the Department of International Politics. He taught modules on communications and politics in Asia, and on journalism in war and conflict.

Serves as the book reviews editor of the Journal of International Communication. Member of the Advisory Boards for Media and Communication, Journal of Media and Information Warfare, and the Asian Journal of Communication, and a member of the editorial board for the Routledge Curzon series, Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia.

Shirley Yu is currently a fellow at the Ash Center, Harvard Kennedy School senior visiting fellow with the Institute of Global Affairs of the LSE .

Formerly a China National Television News Anchor, senior executive and board member, she has been a frequent speaker on China’s political economy, in particular, China’s recent Belt and Road Initiative and its geopolitical implications.

She has a Ph.D. in political economy from China’s Peking University, and a master’s degree in government from Harvard University. She has published three books in Chinese, including On China, by Ambassadors, and the Rise of the RMB and the Fall of the Yen.

She is a seasoned senior executive for multinational listed companies and a board member. She has a strong voice on China’s political economy, digital economy and geopolitics, most recently on geopolitics behind China’s technological rise.

Zhiqun Zhu, PhD, is Professor of Political Science and International Relations and Chair of Department of International Relations at Bucknell University, USA. He was Bucknell’s inaugural Director of the China Institute (2013–2017) and MacArthur Chair in East Asian politics (2008–2014).

He previously taught at University of Bridgeport, Hamilton College, University of South Carolina, and Shanghai International Studies University. In the early 1990s, he was Senior Assistant to Consul for Press and Cultural Affairs at the American Consulate General in Shanghai.

A noted scholar on Chinese foreign policy, Dr. Zhu is a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and is frequently quoted by international media on Chinese and East Asian affairs.

He is the author and editor of a dozen books, including A Critical Decade: China’s Foreign Policy 2008-2018 (World Scientific, 2019); China’s New Diplomacy: Rationale, Strategies and Significance (Ashgate, 2013); New Dynamics in East Asian Politics: Security,

Political Economy, and Society (Bloomsbury, 2012); The People’s Republic of China: Internal and External Challenges (World Scientific, 2010); and US-China Relations in the 21st Century: Power Transition and Peace (Routledge, 2005).