Xie Xiuli biography

Xu Xiuli got her PhD degree on development studies at China Agricultural University and became a staff member of the College of Humanities and Development Studies (COHD) in 2004. She has been a visiting scholar in the Center for Development Studies at the University of Cambridge for a year, and received the Teaching and Learning Fellowship at IDS/UK with the Program of Rising Powers in International Development in 2013. She is now a professor of International Development, and the Deputy Dean of China Institute for South-South Cooperation in Agriculture (CISSA)/Belt and Road Institute for Agricultural Cooperation (BRICA). 

Her main research interests are development-related issues including China’s overseas investment and foreign aid, particularly in African and Asian countries, the evolution of development thinking, and developmental state building in African countries. She is the first author of a series of articles on the nature and daily operation of China’s aid and overseas investment published on some top journals such as World Development, Development and Change and IDS Bulletin. She is a key member of China International Development Research Network and Network of Southern Think Tanks (NeST). She has been invited as a peer-reviewer of the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs and the Journal of Environment and Development. 

She has broad international collaboration with development partners such as the WB, UNDP, ADB, UNOSSC, FAO, IDRC and DFID. She is the initiator of a public knowledge platform: IDT (International Development Times), which disseminates frontier debates about development studies in China. She was invited to the policy consultative conferences respectively by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Agriculture about 2016 G20. She was also invited as one of the 15 advisory members to the sustainable development of China’s overseas investment by UNDP/Ministry of Commerce/SASAC. She was the Chair of the session in the 2nd International Conference: Climate, Sustainability and Development in Semi-Arid Regions in Brazil in 2010. She has also been awarded lots of teaching and researching prizes, among which she was twice nominated as a candidate to the Program of Supporting Outstanding Young Innovative Talents at national level in 2011 and 2014.