Staff profile

My research interests lie broadly within social and political 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 discourse/identity, digital politics, and popular narratives of the international on social media. My work has appeared in journals such as Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Relations, Citizenship Studies, Geopolitics, and Geoforum. I worked at Queen's University Belfast, Université libre de Bruxelles, and Copenhagen University before joining SGIA in October 2022. 

I am co-editor of Geopolitics and co-host of the Shicha podcast. 

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

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. (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, 1-8. 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). 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. (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. (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