Farkhod Aminjonov is an Assistant Professor at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. Energy security, pipeline politics and sustainable development with a particular focus on the Eurasian region lie at the center of his research interests. Recently, he has also been working on a broader context of Central Asia–China relations within the Belt and Road Initiative.

Patrik Andersson is a soon-to-graduate industrial PhD candidate from Aalborg University and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. His PhD thesis studied Chinese interests in Arctic minerals. He is currently employed as a scientific assistant at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).

Natalie Bugalski is a co-founder and the Legal and Policy Director of Inclusive Development International. Natalie is an international human rights lawyer with expertise on corporate and development finance accountability, as well as land tenure and resettlement policy. Natalie holds a Bachelor of Law and a PhD in law from Monash University, Australia.

Oyuna Baldakova is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies, Freie University Berlin. Her interests include China’s political economy and development cooperation, energy transition, and sustainable development in Eurasia. In her doctoral project, Oyuna investigates the BRI implementation in Central Asia. She previously worked in the field of international development on projects with UNESCO Bangkok and EU DEVCO.

Nicholas Bosoni is an Italian documentary photographer based in Vientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republic. With a background in social sciences, his work touches upon themes related to modernisation, urbanisation, traditional livelihoods, and natural resources. He collaborates with various international nongovernmental organisations and development projects in Laos. Nicholas is currently committed to documenting the economic transition ongoing in Laos, a long term work that will eventually result in a photo book.

Benedicte Bull is a Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. She was previously the director of the Oslo Academy of Global Governance and the Norwegian Latin America Research Network. She has researched public–private relations and elites in Latin American development, as well as global governance and institutions. She is currently directing an international research project on ‘Chinese Multilateralism and its Impact on Environmental and Democratic Governance in Africa and Latin America’, funded by the Research Council of Norway.

Diana Castro is the Research Director of Latinoamerica Sustentable (LAS) and a doctoral fellow in the Latin American Studies Programme at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (UASB-Ecuador). Since 2014, Diana has studied Latin America–China relations, with a particular emphasis on Chinese financing mechanisms for development and infrastructure-investment projects. Diana is a member of The Latin America and the Caribbean Network on China (Red ALC-China) and La Red China y América Latina (REDCAEM).

Wanjing (Kelly) Chen is a research assistant professor in the Division of Social Science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on the relationship between the state and capital in the ongoing globalisation of the Chinese political economy. Following the footprint of Chinese investors who are lured into Laos by the Chinese state’s vision of the Belt and Road Initiative, she demonstrates how their discrete and improvisational practices of investment collectively work to turn the initiative into a reality.

Yunnan Chen is a Senior Research Officer in the Development and Public Finance programme at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Her research interests centre around development finance, particularly in infrastructure and energy sectors, and Chinese development finance overseas. She is a PhD Candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Han Cheng is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His ongoing project examines Global China as a critical intellectual project, focusing on the (re)emergence of Chinese development–area studies, world regional geography, and overseas ethnography. He is also broadly interested in the critical geography of China–Africa cooperation and the Belt and Road Initiative. Han received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked as a policy researcher and investigative journalist before joining the academia.

Plato Cheng is an independent researcher interested in ethnic conflicts and state-making in both Myanmar and the South Caucasus. He holds a MA in Conflict Resolution and Mediation from Tel Aviv University and another MA in Political Science from Central European University.

Ronald Chipaike holds a PhD in International Relations from Rhodes University, South Africa. Currently, he lectures on International Relations at Bindura University of Science Education in Zimbabwe. His research interests include Africa–China relations and African agency.

Frangton Chiyemura holds a PhD in international development and is currently a lecturer in international development in the Department of Development Policy and Practice at The Open University in the United Kingdom. His research focuses on Chinese financing and development of critical infrastructure in Africa and how such projects contribute to inclusive growth and structural economic transformation.

Maryia Danilovich is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Modern East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen, Germany. Her expertise is in China’s foreign policy developments and their implications for Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

Leolino Dourado is a researcher affiliated with the Centre for China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Universidad del Pacífico (Lima, Peru). He is a PhD candidate in international politics at Fudan University (2021–24) and holds an MA in international relations from Peking University. He has worked on research projects on South–South cooperation, economic development in middle-income countries, Chinese foreign policy, and Sino-Latin American relations.

Olesya Dovgalyuk is an independent researcher studying issues in regional development and connectivity in Eurasia, with a focus on China, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. Olesya has experience with several research institutes and nonprofits in Europe and Asia, including the United Nations University, the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, and the New Media Advocacy Project. She holds a BSc in Politics and International Relations from the University of Bristol and Master of Laws in Chinese Studies from Peking University.

Edmund Downie is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Columbia University SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Kunming, Yunnan in 2017-18 studying Chinese trade and investment with Southeast Asia in energy and agriculture. He will enter the Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs as a PhD student in Public Affairs in the fall of 2021.

Trym Eiterjord is a PhD student in Geography at the University of British Columbia, a Visiting Predoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and a Research Associate with the Arctic Institute, an interdisciplinary think tank based in Washington, DC, focusing on security issues in the Arctic.

William Figueroa is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics, where he works on projects related to historical and contemporary Sino-Iranian relations, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific region. He received his PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 and is currently working on his first book project, which explores the history of Iran–China relations from 1905 to 1979.

Paulina Garzón is the Director of Latin America Sustentable, an Ecuadorian NGO with a focus in Latin America. She is an Ecuadorian with 25 years of experience working on issues related to the environment, human rights and international finance. Lately, Paulina has focused her work on Chinese investments in Latin America, with particular attention on Chinese environmental and social guidelines for overseas investments.

Francesca Ghiretti is a PhD candidate at King’s College London where she has been awarded the Leverhulme Scholarship as part of the project ‘Interrogating Visions of a Post-Western World: Interdisciplinary and Interregional Perspectives on the Future in a Changing International Order’. She is also a research fellow at Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome and a geopolitical analyst at CQS, a London-based hedge fund.

Pius Ginting is the coordinator of the Indonesian NGO Action for Ecology and People Emancipation (AEER). He is a campaigner and researcher focusing on the environmental and social impacts of extractive industries in Indonesia.

Charlotte Goodburn is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Politics and Development at the Lau China Institute, King’s College London. She researches rural–urban migration and comparative rural and urban development in China and India, with a particular focus on labour migration, household dynamics, welfare and other institutions, and identity registration systems.

Mladen Grgic is a PhD candidate at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, and an associate of the European Institute for Asian Studies in Brussels. He previously conducted research at the University of California, Berkeley, and Xiamen University. He writes in the field of international political economy, with a focus on Chinese infrastructure investments in Eastern Europe and the Balkan region and their impact on internal political dynamics and foreign policy. In parallel, he works as an executive manager of international companies and as a consultant for private enterprises in various sectors.

Burak Gürel is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Centre for Asian Studies at Koç University in Istanbul. Gürel earned his PhD in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University in 2015. He has been published in The Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, Rural China, Review of Radical Political Economics, European Review, New Perspectives on Turkey, and several edited volumes.

Oudom Ham is an environmental and human rights consultant. He has expertise in investigative research, fact-finding, and documentation of social and environmental impacts associated with energy development. He closely follows the development of coal-fired power, large-scale hydropower, and clean energy projects in Cambodia and the Greater Mekong Subregion.

Irna Hofman is a Postdoctoral Research Associate within the European Research Council–funded project ‘China, Law and Development’ at the University of Oxford. She is a legal and rural sociologist specialised in agrarian transformation in Central Asia, with long-term ethnographic fieldwork experience in the Central Asian countryside, and interests and expertise in agrarian political economy, labour relations, food security, gender, and environmental studies, as well as the presence of Chinese actors in Central Asia.

Haneea Isaad is a researcher at the Rural Development Policy Institute. She is a graduate of Yale School of the Environment and specialises in energy policy and economics. Haneea has been actively involved in campaigning for a cleaner energy transition in Pakistan through advocacy and research. She also works as a consultant for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, where she covers Asian energy markets.

Arthur Kaufman is an editor at China Digital Times, and an editorial assistant for the Made in China Journal and Global China Pulse. He graduated from the dual master’s degree program between Sciences Po and Peking University, where he studied human rights and international relations. Previously, he was a Writing and Speaking Fellow at NYU Shanghai.

Danielle Keeton-Olsen is a freelance journalist based in Phnom Penh, covering environmental, business, and labour issues in Cambodia and beyond. She works as a reporter and editor for the Phnom Penh news outlet VOD English, and additionally contributes reporting to Mongabay, South China Morning Post, China Dialogue, Al Jazeera, and others.

Sasha Kinney is a researcher and consultant in Kenya. She provides a range of support to community-led campaigns and organisations, particularly in their advocacy in response to energy and infrastructure projects. In this work, she has produced strategic research and analysis, organised capacity-building workshops, and facilitated evidence-based international financial stakeholder advocacy. She is an affiliate of Georgetown University, African Studies Program, in Washington DC.

Jan Knoerich is Senior Lecturer in the Economy of China at the Lau China Institute, King’s College London. His research examines the business, political economy, and development dimensions of China’s financial internationalisation, including outward foreign direct investment, the internationalisation of the renminbi, and China’s creation of international institutions.

Mina Kozluca is a PhD student in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Before joining the LSE, she was a visiting researcher at Koç University Centre for Asian Studies. She continues to act as a supervisor researcher at the Koç University Belt and Road Initiative Lab.

Rubén Lauferis a postgraduate professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has published numerous academic articles in journals such as Revista Ciclos, Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios Sociales, and Revista Izquierdas, among others.

Danqing Li is Senior Strategist for the Sunrise Project’s China Program, which focuses on decarbonising China’s overseas energy finance and accelerating green investment. With a master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Danqing has expertise in power market analysis, economic assessment, as well as environmental modelling, including of air pollution and water stress, in China, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

Siman Li is Program Associate for the Sunrise Project’s China Program. Siman previously worked for four years in corporate social responsibility consulting and project management. Siman holds an MA in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University and a bachelor’s degree in Finance Accounting and Management from the University of Nottingham.

Guanie Lim is an Assistant Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan. His main research interests are comparative political economy, value chain analysis, and the Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia. He is also interested in broader development issues within Asia, especially those of China, Vietnam, and Malaysia. His latest monograph—The Political Economy of Growth in Vietnam: Between States and Markets (2020)—details the catching-up experience of Vietnam since its 1986 doi moi (renovation) reforms.

Lin  ZHU (朱琳) is an independent scholar interested in the political economy and political ecology of Global China. Her work interrogates Chinese mining investment in Peru through an ethnographic lens, focussing on the social and economic impacts on the ground. Zhu holds an MA in Human Geography from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Neil Loughlin is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at City, University of London. His main research interests include authoritarian politics and the political economy of development. Most of Neil’s work has focused on Southeast Asia, where he previously worked for several local and international nongovernmental organisations as a human rights worker and development professional.

Juliet Lu is a political ecologist who focuses on the implications of China’s growing investments in land and other resources across the world, particularly on rubber in the Mekong Region. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Cornell University Atkinson Center for Sustainability and will be starting in July 2022 as an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in Forest Resources Management and the School of Public Policy & Global Affairs.

Vida Macikenaite is Assistant Professor at the International University of Japan. She holds graduate degrees from Keio University in Japan and Fudan University in China. While her major research interest centres on China’s foreign relations, recently she has been looking into perceptions of China in Europe. She is also interested in authoritarian regimes and state capacity in comparative perspective.

Sango Mahanty is a Professor at the Australian National University. She is a critical geographer who currently studies the politics of green economies, frontier markets, and dramatic nature-society transformations or rupture in Cambodia and Vietnam. She has worked with civil society and government in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, and teaches postgraduate courses on social impact assessment and pollution/waste.

Sarah Milne is a senior lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. Since gaining her PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge (2010), Sarah has studied natural resource politics in a range of settings. Most of her work has focused on Cambodia, where she has been active as an environmentalist and advocate since 2002. Sarah’s latest publication explores local experiences of violence around hydropower dams in the Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia.

Ryan Martínez Mitchell is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD in Law and Archaia Qualification in the Study of Ancient and Premodern Societies from Yale University (2017), a JD from Harvard Law School (2012), and a BA from The New School (2007). His monograph Recentering the World: China and the Transformation of International Law, which explores modern China’s entry into the international legal order, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Ellen Moore is the International Mining Campaign Manager at Earthworks, an environmental non-profit dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the adverse impacts of mineral and energy development while promoting sustainable solutions. She leads campaign efforts to end the practice of submarine tailings disposal and to support Indigenous communities exerting their right to free, prior, and informed consent.

Shirin Naseer is a Research Assistant at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies and a PhD student at Palacky University, Olomouc. Her research focuses on the impact of China’s soft power vis-a-vis the Belt and Road Initiative in South Asia. She formerly worked as a Senior Research Analyst at Spearhead Research, specialising in Pakistan’s political risk analysis, with a focus on Asia Pacific developments.

Rundong Ning is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Yale University. His dissertation research is about entrepreneurship and changing modes of work in Congo-Brazzaville. He also studies international money transfer in Congo and China–Africa connections. His research interests include work, entrepreneurship, volunteerism, finance, and science, technology, and society. He has done fieldwork in Africa and China.

Rui Jie Peng is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania. Her research interests include labour, gender, migration, race and ethnicity, and political and transnational sociology. Her current book project is an ethnography of the understudied ethnic Qiang women and their labour practices in a migrant-sending community in Sichuan Province, China.

Marcin Przychodniak works as a China analyst in the Asia and Pacific Program at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. He obtained his PhD in Political Science in 2012 at the University of Warsaw. In 2005, he graduated in political science from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Between 2012 and 2016, he worked as a diplomat at the Polish Embassy in Beijing.

Julie Radomski is a PhD candidate at American University’s School of International Service. Her dissertation research explores the emergence of China as a development actor in Latin America through an ethnography of Ecuador’s Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project. She holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge and BPhil in Anthropology and Economics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Greg Raymond is a lecturer in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs researching Southeast Asian politics and foreign relations. He is the author of Thai Military Power: A Culture of Strategic Accommodation (2018) and the lead author of The United States-Thai Alliance: History, Memory and Current Developments (forthcoming).

Ricardo Reboredo is an Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Department of International Relations and European Studies, Metropolitan University Prague (MUP). He received his PhD in Geography from Trinity College Dublin (2020). His research focuses on China’s politico-economic internationalisation and the varied ways in which this is articulated throughout the Global South.

Maria Repnikova is an expert on Chinese political communication, and an Associate Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State University. She has written widely on China’s media politics, including propaganda, critical journalism, digital nationalism, and soft power. Maria is the author of the award-winning book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2017), as well as the recent, Chinese Soft Power (Cambridge Global China Element Series, 2022).

Tabita Rosendal is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden, as well as an affiliate at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Denmark. Her research focuses on the Chinese governance practices of the 21^st-Century Maritime Silk Road, part of the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as the role of China’s state-owned enterprises in port projects in Sri Lanka and China.

Katherine Schmidt is a researcher focused on infrastructure development, emerging technology, and Global China. From January to May 2019, she conducted research in Baku, Azerbaijan in affiliation with the Center for Economic and Social Development. From March to December 2022, she conducted research in Lima, Peru, in affiliation with Universidad del Pacífico’s Center for China and Asia-Pacific Studies on a Fulbright Student Research Grant. Katherine holds a B.S. in Science, Technology, and International Affairs, and a minor in Chinese from Georgetown University. In 2018 she studied Azerbaijani as part of the Critical Language Scholarship program.

Cheryl Mei-ting Schmitz conducted ethnographic fieldwork on Chinese business and labour relations in Angola from 2012 to 2014. Her publications on the topic have appeared in HAU, Journal of Asian and Pacific Migration, and American Anthropologist. She is currently based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where she is tracing the development of African studies in China.

Shawn Shieh is the founder of Social Innovations Advisory, a consultancy dedicated to building a resilient civil society in the Global South. He is a Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute and a Research Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He previously worked at China Labour Bulletin, and China Development Brief. Shawn received his PhD in political science from Columbia University, has published extensively on Chinese overseas investment and civil society, and blogs about NGOs in China.

Austin Strange is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. His research examines China’s contemporary and historical roles in the world economy and global development. He is the co-author of <i>Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China’s Overseas Development Program</i> (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and has recently published articles in <i>American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Journal of Contemporary China</i>.

David Styan teaches international relations at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written extensively on political and economic issues in the Horn of Africa. Recent published work includes articles on the role of China and other foreign powers in the Red Sea region.

Ágnes Szunomár, PhD is a Hungarian economist studying China’s economic footprint in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). She is the head of the Research Group on Development Economics at the Institute of World Economics, CERS, Hungary and an Associate Professor at Corvinus University, Budapest. With more than 100 scientific publications, Ágnes has led and participated in several international research projects. She is a member of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action ‘China in Europe Research Network’, where she is the head of Working Group on Strategic Sectors and Infrastructure Developments. She is also a member of China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe (CHOICE) network.

Angela Tritto is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Division of Public Policy and a Postdoctoral Fellow jointly appointed by the Institute of Emerging Market Studies and by the Division of Social Science at HKUST.  She is also a Fellow of the Global Future Council of Sustainable Tourism at the World Economic Forum. She is currently working on projects related to the sustainability of Chinese overseas investments and, more broadly, the Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia. She holds a PhD from the City University of Hong Kong.

Richard Turcsanyi is a Key Researcher at Palacky University Olomouc, Assistant Professor at Mendel University in Brno, and Programme Director at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS). He holds a PhD in International Relations and further degrees in economy and political science. He is the author of Chinese Assertiveness in the South China Sea (2017) and has published a number of academic articles and opinion pieces on Chinese foreign policy and relations between China and Central and Eastern Europe. He is a member of various networks focusing on contemporary China and EU-China relations.

Anastas Vangeli is an Assistant Professor at the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is also a Research Fellow at the EU–Asia Institute, ESSCA School of Management, and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the ChinaMed Project, Torino World Affairs Institute. Anastas has written on global China, its domestic transformations, and its ideational impact abroad, the Belt and Road Initiative, Europe–China relations (including relations between China and Central, Eastern and southeastern Europe), and nationalism in Europe and beyond.

Ying Wang is a PhD researcher at Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University, with a research focus on the internationalisation of Chinese NGOs. Her PhD thesis examines the role of Chinese NGOs in China’s development cooperation. On the Leiden Belt and Road Platform, she curates the Chinese NGO Internationalization Database, a global map focusing on international humanitarian and development projects of Chinese NGOs. Prior to her PhD research, she worked for the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Jared Ward is a lecturer based in Akron, Ohio. He received his PhD from the University of Akron in 2019 with a focus on Chinese foreign policy towards the developing world. He researches China’s economic and political engagement in the English-speaking Caribbean during the Cold War and in modern times.

Trissia Wijaya is a Senior Research Fellow at Ritsumeikan University, Japan and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Indo-Pacific Research Centre, Murdoch University, Australia. She has a PhD in Politics from Murdoch University and studies the political economy of green development, infrastructure financing, China–Indonesia relations, and public–private partnerships. She has recently been selected as the 2023 Herb Feith Centre Fellow at Monash University, Australia and the 2024–2025 ANU Indonesia Project Visiting Fellow. Her work has appeared in New Political Economy, Environmental Politics, Journal of Contemporary Asia, The Pacific Review, the Asia-Pacific Journal, and International Affairs.

Petra Kjell Wright is Campaigns Manager at Recourse. She has previously worked at organisations such as the Bretton Woods Project, Progressio, the New Economics Foundation, and the World Development Movement, focusing on social and environmental accountability, including climate change. Petra holds an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, a BSc in Social Science from University of Stockholm, Sweden, and a PGDip in Environment and Sustainability from Birkbeck, University of London.

Pei-hua Yu is a journalist covering energy transition and Chinese investment and infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia. She is currently based in Taiwan and writes for publications around the world. She was previously based in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Yangon.

Denghua Zhang is a Research Fellow at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University. His research focuses on Chinese foreign policy, foreign aid, and China’s relations with the Asia-Pacific region, especially the Pacific. His book A Cautious New Approach: China’s Growing Trilateral Aid Cooperation was one of ANU Press’ top ten new releases in 2020.

Xiao’ou Zhu is a consultant on international development. Her research interests include international trade policies, global value chains, regional integration, emerging technologies, state-owned enterprise reform, and industrial policies in international trade and investment. She used to work in impact investment to combine global stakeholders’ efforts to launch business-driven development programs where investors’ interests and development priorities intersect in postwar countries.