November 2016

Iginio Gagliardone teaches Media and Communication at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and is an Associate Research Fellow in New Media and Human Rights at the University of Oxford, U.K. He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and has spent years living and working in Africa, including for UNESCO. His research focuses on the relationship between new media, political change, and human development, and on the emergence of distinctive models of the information society in the Global South. He has extensively published in communication, development studies, and African studies journals, and his work has been translated in Arabic, Chinese, French, and Italian. Gagliardone is the author of The Politics of Technology in Africa.

Bo Zhiyue, an authority on Chinese elite politics, is Deputy Dean of XIPU New Era Development Research Institute and Director and Professor of XIPU Institution at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, People’s Republic of China. Bo earned his Bachelor of Law and Master of Law in International Politics from Peking University and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

Bo has taught at Peking University, Roosevelt University, the University of Chicago, American University, St. John Fisher College, Tarleton State University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the National University of Singapore, and Victoria University of Wellington. He is a recipient of the Trustees’ Distinguished Scholar Award at St. John Fisher College and the inaugural holder of the Joe and Theresa Long Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at Tarleton State University. He has also been a Visiting Distinguished Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University and a Chair Professor at both National Chengchi University and National Taiwan University.

His research interests include China’s elite politics, Chinese provincial leaders, central-local relations, cross-strait relations, Sino-U.S. relations, international relations theories, and global governance. He has published 197 book chapters and articles and 10 books, including a trilogy on China’s elite politics: Chinese Provincial Leaders: Economic Performance and Political Mobility since 1949 (M. E. Sharpe, 2002), China’s Elite Politics: Political Transition and Power Balancing (World Scientific Publishing Company, 2007), and China’s Elite Politics: Governance and Democratization (World Scientific Publishing Company, 2010). His most recent books include China-U.S. Relations in Global Perspective (Victoria University Press, 2016) (editor) and China’s Political Dynamics under Xi Jinping (World Scientific Publishing Company, forthcoming). He is a regular contributor to The Diplomat.

Bo is also a consultant for government agencies and business organizations. He has briefed government leaders and senior diplomats in Singapore, Thailand, Russia, the Netherlands, France, South Korea, Taiwan, China, the European Commission, and New Zealand, as well as business leaders in the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Europe. He has been frequently interviewed by international media such as the BBC, ABC, CNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, The Guardian, and Bloomberg.