Christopher R. Hughes is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he also served as Director of the Asia Research Centre from 2002 to 2005. His PhD (from the LSE) was on the topic Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism: National Identity and Status in International Society and was awarded the British International Studies Association best thesis of the year prize for 1995. He teaches specialist courses in the International Politics of the Asia Pacific, Chinese Foreign and Security Policy and Foreign Policy Analysis.

His research focuses on the Asia-Pacific with special reference to Chinese foreign policy and politics, with monographs on Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism (Routledge 1997), China and the Internet: Politics of the Digital Leap Forward (edited with Gudrun Wacker, Routledge 2003) and Chinese Nationalism in the Global Era (Routledge 2006). He has various articles on Chinese politics and foreign policy, the international politics of the Asia Pacific, international relations theory and foreign policy in leading academic journals.

He  first visited China in 1986 and studied Mandarin at the National Normal University in Taiwan in 1989, where he also lived for most of the 1990s. He is active in developing academic links with leading universities in East Asia, and has organised a number of joint projects with Renmin (People’s) University in Beijing, Fudan University in Shanghai and the Shanghai Institutes for International Relations. He has also developed ties with leading universities in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, and has been a visiting fellow at Lingnan University (Hong Kong) Aichi University (Japan) and Waseda Universtity (Japan). He is happy to share his knowledge and experience with government and corporate sectors, often working with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Cabinet Office and the EU’s External Action Service.