Iwo Amelung is professor of Chinese history and culture at the Interdisciplinary Center for East-Asian Studies (IZO) at Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Nicholas Bequelin is currently visiting scholar at the China Center, Yale Law School.

Pádraig Carmody is an associate professor in the department of geography at Trinity College, Dublin. He is editor-in-chief of Geoforum and author of Rise of the BRICs in Africa: The Geopolitics of South–South Relations (2013, Zed Books)

Chihyun Chang, a research fellow of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, teaches the history of modern China's foreign relations, imperial and colonial history, and modern Anglo-Chinese history. He is the author of Government, Imperialism and Nationalism: The Maritime Customs Service and the Chinese Staff (Routledge, 2013).

Juan Chen is an associate professor in the department of applied social sciences, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her current research focuses on migration and urbanization, health and mental health, help seeking and service use.

Shuo Chen is a research associate in the department of applied social sciences, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include environmental health and social policy.

Siu-Keung Cheung is associate professor of sociology at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.

Deborah S. Davis is a professor of sociology at Yale University. Her current research focuses on intimacy, marriage and intergenerational relationships.

Kirk A. Denton is professor of Chinese literature at the Ohio State University. He is author of Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China (Hawai‘i University Press, 2014). He edits the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and manages its sister website: MCLC Resource Center (http://u.osue.edu/mclc/).

Ding Sai is professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and adjunct faculty member of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Dong Guoqiang is professor of history at Nanjing University and in the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies. His research focuses on the political and social history of contemporary china.

Joseph Fewsmith is professor of political science and international relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. He is the author, most recently, of The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Mobo Gao is chair of Chinese studies at the centre for Asian studies at the University of Adelaide. His research interest includes studies of rural China, contemporary Chinese politics and culture, Chinese migration to Australia and Chinese language. One of his books, the critically acclaimed Gao Village, is a case study of the village that he came from. His latest book, The Battle of China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, is a reassessment of the Mao era and the Cultural Revolution.

Björn Gustafsson is professor at the department of social work, University of Gothenburg and Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany.

Reza Hasmath is a lecturer in Chinese politics at the University of Oxford. His current research looks at (1) state–society relationships in contemporary China, and its policy-specific implications; (2) the education and labour market experiences of ethnic minorities; and (3) theories and practices of international development.

Anning Hu is an associate professor of sociology at Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

Jennifer Y. J. Hsu is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alberta. Her research looks at state–NGO interactions and the growth of civil society in China. Her recent publications include the monograph HIV/AIDS in China: The Economic and Social Determinants (with D. Sutherland), and the co-edited book The Chinese Corporatist State: Adaptation, Survival and Resistance (with R. Hasmath).

Wenqing Kang is associate professor of Chinese history at Cleveland State University, and the author of Obsession: Male Same-Sex Relations in China, 1900–1950 (Hong Kong University Press, 2009).

Rebecca E. Karl teaches history at New York University. Most recently, she is the co-editor (with Lydia Liu and Dorothy Ko) of The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (Columbia University Press, 2013).

Emilian Kavalski is associate professor of global studies at the Institute for Social Justice, ACU. His research has focused on European politics, international theory, security studies, and Asian affairs. He is currently working on (i) the encounter of international relations with life in the anthropocene, especially the conceptualization of and engagement with non-human actors; and (ii) the nascent Asian normative orders and the ways in which they confront, complement, and transform established traditions, norms, and institutions. He has authored three books and edited/co-edited eight volumes on these topics.

Pierre F. Landry is an associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh and a research associate with the Research Center for Contemporary China at Peking University. His research focuses on public opinion and local governance.

Chengfang Liu is assistant professor in the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). She obtained her PhD from the University of California, Davis. Her research interests include education and public investment.

Prashant Loyalka is a center research fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.

Stephen L. Morgan is professor of Chinese economic history at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham, Dean of Social Sciences, the University of Nottingham Ningbo China; and honorary fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. He researches Chinese economic and business development from the 18th century to the present.

Liselotte Odgaard is an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College. Her latest monograph is China and Coexistence: Beijing's National Security Strategy for the 21st Century (Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). Her latest visiting fellowship was April–June 2014 at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

Wooyeal Paik is an assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, and visiting researcher in the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His research interests focus on the comparative authoritarianism, political economy and state–society relations of contemporary China and other East Asian countries, and international security in Northeast Asia. His recent publications include “I want to be expropriated!: The politics of xiaochanquanfang land development in suburban China” (Journal of Contemporary China, 2012), “Authoritarianism and humanitarian aid: regime stability and external relief in China and Myanmar” (The Pacific Review, 2011), and “Economic development and mass political participation in contemporary China: determinants of provincial petition (xinfang) activism 1994–2002” (International Political Science Review, 2012).

David Porter is professor of architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, and a visiting professor of architecture at RMIT, Melbourne. He was formerly head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow.

Maddalena Procopio is a PhD candidate in international relations at the London School of Economics. Her thesis is a comparative study of how the interactive effects of state and social structures in Kenya impact the country's relations with China across sectors (trade, healthcare, education). She is also an associate PhD with ANR EsCa where she is conducting research on Chinese soft power in Africa and an associate with the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi.

Nanxiu Qian is associate professor of Chinese literature at Rice University. Qian's research interests include classical Chinese literature, Chinese intellectual history, and comparative literature. She is the author of Spirit and Self in Medieval China: The Shih-shuo hsin-yu and Its Legacy (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001). Her new book, Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui (1866–1911) and the Era of Reform, will come out in March 2015 (Stanford University Press).

James Reilly is a senior lecturer in the department of government and international relations at the University of Sydney.

Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth senior fellow and the co-director of the rural education action programme at Stanford University. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Economic Development and Cultural Change. His research focuses on Chinese agricultural policy, rural resources and the economics of education and health. His papers have been published in Science, Nature, American Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Literature, amongst others. Dr. Rozelle has received the Friendship Award in 2008, the highest award given to a non-Chinese by the Premier.

Andrew Scobell is senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and adjunct professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University, both located in Washington, DC.

Yaojiang Shi is professor at the School of Economics and Management, Northwest University. His research focuses on education, nutrition and poverty in China.

Nick R. Smith is a PhD candidate in the department of urban planning and design, Harvard University. His recent publications include “Living on the edge: household registration reform and peri-urban precarity in China” (Journal of Urban Affairs, April 2014) and “Beyond top-down/bottom-up: village transformation on China's urban edge” (Cities, December 2014). His current research explores Chinese urban planning and policy in the development of a peri-urban village in Chongqing.

Jonathan Sullivan is associate professor and deputy director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. He tweets @jonlsullivan.

Xiaoping Sun is assistant professor of history at Saint Mary's University in Canada. Her research interests began with social movements and gender politics in Republican China and now have shifted to post-1949 frontier development, migration, land reclamation, food security and the environment in Northeast China. Her new research project, “Feeding the Nation from the Wilderness: Food and Identity in Northeast China, 1949–1979,” investigates the impacts of Maoist state-mobilized migration and land reclamation programs on society and the environment in the frontier province of Heilongjiang.

Ian Taylor is professor in international relations and African politics at the University of St Andrews and chair professor in the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China, as well as being professor extraordinary in political science at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Edward Vickers is associate professor of comparative education at Kyushu University, Japan. His recent work includes Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia: Identity Politics, Schooling and Popular Culture (Routledge 2013, co-edited with Paul Morris and Naoko Shimazu), and Constructing Modern Asian Citizenship (Routledge 2015, co-edited with Krishna Kumar). He is currently working on a history of China's education system since the 1970s (co-authored with Zeng Xiaodong).

Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University, where he teaches in the department of sociology, and is senior fellow in the Freeman-Spogli Institute of International Studies. He is the author of China under Mao: Anatomy of a Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2015).

Xiaobing Wang is assistant professor in the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Her research focuses on the development of labour market, poverty and productivity analysis in China and other transition countries.

Andrew Watson is an emeritus professor in the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia. From 1999 to 2008, he was the Ford Foundation Representative in Beijing. His research has focussed on issues of rural development in China, and he has recently been studying the development of China's social security system and its impact on migrant workers.

Wu Junqing recently completed his PhD at the University of Nottingham. His doctoral research is on “religious heresy” as a state construct in the Qing and how this perception still influences the religious policy of modern China. He now teaches in the history department of Exeter University.

Chengzhi Yi is associate professor of political science at East China University of Political Science and Law, and visiting scholar in the University of Oxford China Centre. His research interests include the peasants’ citizenship, state–society relationships, public service supply and urban governance in contemporary China. His current project focuses on how public service resources are allocated in metropolitan rural–urban fringe zones of China. He is the author of Urbanization, State-building and Peasants' Citizenship Analysis in Contemporary China (Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2013).

Jishun Zhang is a professor of history at East China Normal University and an adjunct professor of Fudan University. She was a visiting scholar at the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC-Berkeley (1994–1995) and a coordinate scholar at Harvard-Yenching Institute (2012–2013). She has published the book Chinese Intellectuals' Views on America, 1943–1953 (1999) and numerous articles.

Linxiu Zhang is professor and deputy director of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). She has published widely both in domestic and international professional journals.

Yeqin Zhao is an associate professor and deputy director of the department of sociology, researcher in the Center for Modern Chinese City Studies at East China Normal University, and research associate at the NYU–ECNU Institute for Social Development at NYU Shanghai. Her research mainly focuses on urban development, residential segregation, citizenship of internal migrants in urban China. She is the author of Construction des espaces urbains et rénovation d'un quartier de Shanghai : la problématique de la migration et du changement social (Shanghai sanlian shudian, 2011).

Tiantian Zheng holds a PhD in anthropology from Yale University. She is professor of anthropology at State University of New York, Cortland. She is the author of seven books, a guest-edited journal issue, 22 refereed journal articles and a number of book chapters.