Professor Yongjin Zhang is joining the Centre from the University of Auckland  on 1 July as Professor of East Asian Studies and Director of CEAS.

Professor Zhang currently holds a Personal Chair in China and International Studies at the University of Auckland and is the Director of New Zealand Asia Institute. Prior to this, he held research and teaching posts at Oxford University, the Australian National University and the Institute of International Politics in Beijing. In 1991, he won the British International Studies Association prize for the best article published in Review of International Studies.

Professor Jeffrey Henderson is leaving the University of Manchester to join CEAS as Leverhulme Research Professor of International Development on 1 April.

Professor Henderson is currently Professor of International Economic Sociology in the Manchester Business School and in the Institute for Development Policy and Management, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, where he is also Director of the MSc Programme in Globalisation and Development. He has taught previously at the Universities of Birmingham and Hong Kong and has held Visiting Professorships or Fellowships at the Universities of Bristol, Lodz, Melbourne, New England, Warwick, Glasgow, Leeds, California at Berkeley, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz and at Kwansei Gakuin University, Kobe.

Professor Ray Forrest, Acting Director of CEAS and Professor of Urban Studies in the School for Policy Studies, said: ‘These two new appointments represent the next stage of the Centre’s development and will add considerable intellectual weight and international experience. We set out in 2005 to become a major new focal point for teaching and research into contemporary East Asia and its historical foundations and we are well on the way to achieving that aim.’