Dr Ferran Perez Mena
IASH-SSPS Research Fellow, August 2026 - June 2027
Home institution: Durham University
Ferran Pérez Mena is Assistant Professor of International Relations of East Asia in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. His research focuses on transnational elite networks and elite studies in world politics, China–West transnational elite networks, China in the Global South, Global IR, and Global disorder. He is the author of Contender States and Modern Chinese International Thought: From the Republican Era to the ‘Chinese School of International Relations’.
Project title: Scottish Universities and development of Sino-British transnational elite knowledge networks from 1970s to 1990s
This research examines the role of Scottish universities and non-state organisations in the development and pluralisation of International Relations (IR) as a discipline in post-Mao China, as well as in the intellectual socialisation of Chinese IR scholars. While considerable scholarship has examined the role of transnational forces—particularly those shaped by the legacies of imperialism, Soviet thought and the influence of American IR after 1978—in shaping the development of Chinese IR, considerably less attention has been paid to the role of British ideas of world politics. Focusing on the activities of Scottish universities and non-state actors, as well as the work of IR scholars based in Scotland, this project addresses the following research question: How did Scottish universities, non-state organisations, and IR scholars contribute to the intellectual socialisation of Chinese IR scholars and the pluralisation of the IR discipline in post-Mao China?