Dr. Shizhi Zhang (he/him)

Dr Shizhi Zhang joined the Urban Institute in 2023 as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate. Before this, he earned my PhD and Master's degrees from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Shizhi also holds a Bachelor's degree from the Department of Finance and Statistics at Hunan University in China.

Shizhi’s research interests are organized around two main fields: a) Chinese politics and history, and b) global politics from a non-Western perspective. His past work has focused on examining China's political economy through a historical-sociological lens, offering an indigenous perspective on China's rise in the modern era. He is currently collaborating with Dr Linda Westman on her ESRC funded 5-year PLURALIZE project. By drawing upon Chinese history and philosophy, they aim to construct an indigenous theoretical framework for understanding China's environmental justice. This will shed new light on the evolving landscape of environmental governance in China.