Staff profile

My research interests lie broadly within critical theory, political geography, and international relations. Some of my earlier work was focused on citizenship and migration in both European and Chinese contexts. More recent projects are concerned with digital narratives, postcolonial nationalism, and the global right, primarily drawing on empirical evidence from Chinese cyberspace. My work has appeared in journals such as Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Relations, Citizenship Studies, Geopolitics, and Geoforum. I am director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies. I am a co-editor of Geopolitics, an editorial team member of Made in China Journal, and a co-host of the Shicha podcast.

Connect via Bluesky: @chenchenzh.bsky.social

• digital far right
• politics and international relations of China
• digital narratives
• race
• citizenship
• discourse and identity
• postcolonial theory

Chapter in book

• Zhang, C. (2023). Hukou and suzhi as technologies of governing citizenship and migration in China. In W. Walters, & M. Tazzioli (Eds.), Handbook on Governmentality. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839108662.00029
• Zhang, C. (2020). Free Movement and Social Citizenship: Towards a Politically Constructed Understanding of Solidarity Across Borders. In Transnational Solidarity. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108766593.016

Journal Article

• Zhang, C. (2024). Race, gender, and Occidentalism in global reactionary discourses. Review of International Studies, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210524000299
• Zhang, C. (2024). The ‘Three-Body Problem’, the Imperative of Survival, and the Misogyny of Reactionary Rhetoric. Made in China, 9(1), 202-209. https://doi.org/10.22459/MIC.09.01.2024.28
• Zhang, C. (2023). Postcolonial nationalism and the global right. Geoforum, 144(August), Article 103824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103824
• Zhang, C., & Morris, C. (2023). Borders, bordering and sovereignty in digital space. Territory, Politics, Governance, 11(6), 1051-1058. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2023.2216737
• Zhang, C. (2022). Contested disaster nationalism in the digital age: Emotional registers and geopolitical imaginaries in COVID-19 narratives on Chinese social media. Review of International Studies, 48(2), https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210522000018
• Zhang, C. (2020). Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness and global imaginaries in debating world politics online. European Journal of International Relations, 26(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119850253
• Zhang, C. (2020). Governing (through) trustworthiness: technologies of power and subjectification in China’s social credit system. Critical Asian Studies, 52(4), https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2020.1822194
• Zhang, C. (2019). Mobile Borders and Turbulent Mobilities: Mapping the Geopolitics of the Channel Tunnel. Geopolitics, 24(3), https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2017.1379994
• Zhang, C. (2018). Governing neoliberal authoritarian citizenship: theorizinghukouand the changing mobility regime in China. Citizenship Studies, 22(8), https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2018.1531824
• Zhang, C., & Lillie, N. (2015). Industrial citizenship, cosmopolitanism and European integration. European Journal of Social Theory, 18(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431014553756
• Zhang, C. (2014). Situated Interpretations of Nationalism, Imperialism, and Cosmopolitanism: Revisiting the Writings of Liang in the Encounter Between Worlds. Journal of Historical Sociology, 27(3), https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12058