Directors
Current Directors
Professor Mark Wang
Director, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies
Mark Wang is Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies and Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. He was awarded a Bachelor of Science at Shanxi Normal University in 1982 and Master of Science at Northeast Institute of Geography and Agro-Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1985. In 1995 he gained his PhD from the University of British Columbia. Mark has been with the University of Melbourne since 1996. His recent research concerns China’s land acquisition, resettlement/displacement, migration, and water management.
Selected publications
Professor Wang is a human geographer and has published widely on China’s urbanisation, development, and environment issues.
Dr Anthony Spires
Deputy Director, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies
Anthony J. Spires joined the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies as Deputy Director and senior lecturer in January 2018. Prior to coming to the University of Melbourne, he held positions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and as Director of the Centre for Social Innovation Studies. His research focuses on the development of civil society in China, including philanthropy, governmental regulation, and the cultures of non-profit organisations. He recently served as a Consulting Editor for The American Journal of Sociology and is a frequent reviewer for other academic publications and presses. His research has appeared in The China Journal, China Quarterly, China Information, Journal of Civil Society, and The American Journal of Sociology.
A graduate of Occidental College, Anthony holds a PhD in Sociology from Yale University. He is currently working on a book about democratic culture, voluntary associations, and civil society in China.
Founding Director
Professor Christine Wong
Founding and Former Director
Christine Wong is the founding and former director of CCCS. She holds a PhD and MA in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An international authority on China’s public finance and public sector reform, Christine has been advisor to numerous international organisations including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the IMF and OECD.
Prior to coming to Melbourne, she was Professor of Chinese Public Finance and Director of Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford from 2007 to 2013. Prior to that she was the Henry M. Jackson Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle and Guest Professor at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. Christine has published extensively and her work on public finance, central-local relations and their implications for governance, economic development and welfare in China is widely cited.