Professor Julia C Strauss

Julia C. Strauss received a BA in Chinese Language and European History from Connecticut College (1983) and both an MA and PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley (1984, 1991). She moved to the Department of Political and International Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 1994. She served as Editor of The China Quarterly from 2002-2011 and was promoted to Professor in 2013. She offers courses in Chinese politics and comparative political sociology.

Office hours

Term 1: Thursdays, 3:00pm-5:00pm
Term 2: Thursdays, 1:00pm-3:00pm online - book a slot

Her research interests span both sides of the Taiwan Straits and are focused on state building and institution building, governance, the performative dimensions of politics, the environment, and China's "going out" policy toward the developing world, particularly with respect to Africa and Latin America.  

Her publications include the co-edited volumes From the Great Wall to the New World: China and Latin American in the 21st Century (CUP, forthcoming 2012), China and Africa: Emerging Patterns in Globalization and Development (CUP 2009), and Staging Politics: Power and Performance in Asia and Africa (IB Tauris, 2007). 

Single authored books include the edited volume The History of the People's Republic of China (CUP, 2006), and the monograph Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-1940 (Clarendon, 1998). 

She has written articles on subjects as wide ranging as China's contemporary forestry administration and terror in the early years of the People's Republic, with the articles "Forestry Reform and the Transformation of State Capacity in fin de siècle China" (Journal of Asian Studies, 68:4), and "Paternalist Terror: The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and Regime Consolidation in the People's Republic of China, 1950-53" (Comparative Studies in Society and History). 

She is currently working on a monograph with the working title "Security, Land and Rice: Trajectories of Regime Consolidation in China and Taiwan, 1949-1955".