Curriculum Vitae of the Speakers
Li Yitian Ph.D.
Li Yitian is currently working at the Central Compilation & Translation Bureau in Beijing. Furthermore, he is an editor for the periodic journal Marxism and Reality. From 2007 until 2009 Li Yitian was an assistant professor at the institute of Contemporary Marxism. His main research interests are modern ethics and political philosophy. His latest publication is entitled Virtue Ethics: Phronesis and Moral Diversity.
He gained his doctoral degree from the department of philosophy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Li Yitian is expected to give a presentation entitled "Earthquake in Sichuan and Ecological Reconstruction: A Dialectic Tension between Chinese Political System and Environmental Protection" at our conference.
Lin Zhen, Ph.D.
Lin Zhen is the vice dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Beijing Forestry University. Besides, Lin Zhen is the chief officer of the Center for Ecological Civilization in Beijing. His main research area includes public administration, environmental policy and the history of eco-civilization and forestry.
Lin Zhen is the vice editor of "Introduction of Service-oriental Government" and "Eco-Civilization".
Lin Zhen will give a presentation on public participation in eco-civilization construction at our conference.
Professor Li Huibin, Ph.D.
Professor Li Huibin is the director of the Center for China Studies and Deputy Director of China Center for Comparative Politics & Economics. From 1994 until 1998, he was a professor at the China Academy of Economic Culture. Li Huibins main research interests are philosophy and political economics.
Li Huibins presentation, which he is going to hold at our conference, is entitled "Ecological Rights and Ecological Justice: The Structure of Organization and Governance in China".
Ran Ran, Ph.D.
Ran Ran is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the US-China Institute, University of California, USA.
In her research she focuses on comparative environmental politics on the local level and policy implementation, decentralization and central-local relations in China. In her dissertation entitled "Environmental Politics at Local Levels in China: Explaining Policies Implementation Gap and Assessing the Implications", Ran Ran explored the dynamics, implications and functions of the environmental policies implementation gap on the local level in the context of ongoing political system transformation.
She completed her Ph. D with summa cum laude in political science at Duisburg-Essen University, Germany, in July 2009.
At our conference, Ran Ran will give a presentation on the environmental policies implementation failure and its challenge for party-state legitimacy in China.
Liu Rensheng, Ph.D.
Liu Rensheng is an associated researcher at the World Socialism Research Institute of the Central Bureau of Compilation and Translation in Beijing. Lius main research interests are ecological Marxism, ecological civilization construction in China and comparative studies between China and Europe regarding political ecology and political economics.
Liu Rensheng is the author of Introduction of Ecological Marxism and the translator of Marx's Ecology by John Bellamy Foster.
At our conference, Liu Rensheng is expected to give a presentation on ecological governance in Germany and it's enlightenment on ecological civilization construction in China.
Professor Huan Qingzhi, Ph.D.
Huan Qingzhi is a professor of comparative politics at the Research Institute of Marxism at Peking University, and also at the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University, China. His main research areas are environmental politics and left-wing politics. He is the author of "International Comparison on Environmental Politics" and "A comparative study of European Green Parties".
As a visiting professor at Freie Universität Berlin [Free University Berlin], Huan Qingzhi worked on a research project entitled "The European Greens as a Euro-Party: Taking the case of the 2009 EP elections".
At our conference, he will give a presentation on the functions and limitations of regional supervision centers for environmental protection in China.
Xianbing Liu, Ph.D.
Xianbing Liu is a policy researcher at the Kansai Research Center of the Institute of Global Environmental Strategies in Tokyo, Japan. In his work there, he is mainly concerned with strategic policy research on businesses and the environment interactions. In his research, Xianbing Liu focuses on environmental information disclosure, waste management and difficulties with electronic waste recycling in China.
At our conference, Xianbing Liu will give a presentation on environmental activism of firm's neighboring residents in China.
Wu Xiaohong
Wu Xiaohong is program coordinator at EENOW Environmental Education Network in Beijing. EENNOW is a Chinese non-governmental and non-profit organization which aims at promoting environmental knowledge and environmental awareness. Their internet website is a resource to serve Chinese environmental NGOs, schools and universities with information in reference to environmental education. Special attention is paid to the promotion of ecosystem conservation efforts in the northern Xinjiang region.
Wu Xiaohong will supplement the scientific perspective on environmental governance by adding the expertise of a Chinese non-governmental organization.
At our conference, she is expected to give a presentation on public participation in the implementation of environmental protection in the rural areas in China.
Professor Andreas Oberheitmann, Ph.D.
Andreas Oberheitmann is the director of the Research Center for International Environmental Policy at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Furthermore, he is a guest professor at the department of Environmental Science and Engineering of Tsinghua University and serves as an expert for the German based "Centrum fuer Internationale Migration und Entwicklung" [Center for International Migration and Development].
In his work at the research center, he is mainly concerned with policy advisory regarding global environmental policies such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto protocol, post-Kyoto solutions and concepts of a low carbon economy in China.
Andreas Oberheitmann studied Economics and Sinology at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
At our conference, Andreas Oberheitmann will give a presentation on China's role in a post-Kyoto regime of international climate governance based on cumulative per capita CO2 emission rights.
Niels Thevs, Ph.D.
Niels Thevs is an assistant professor at "Institut für Botanik und Lanschaftsökologie" [Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology] at University of Greifswald, Germany.
His research interests are nature conservation and management strategies, methods of rehabilitation of degraded forest ecosystems and climate change adaptation strategies. Niels Thevs is conducting these research activities mainly in central Asia such as the Aral Sea Basin River and in Xinjiang, autonomous region of China.
Niels Thevs studied Biology and Sinology at the University of Hamburg. In 2006 he took his Ph.D. at the University of Greifswald.
At our conference, Niels Thevs is expected to give a presentation on a case study using the Tarim Basin as an example of the impact of local water allocation governance in regions under water scarcity.
Anja Senz, M.A.
Anja Senz is the executive director of the Confucius Institute Rhein-Ruhr in Duisburg and research assistant at the institute for East Asian Science at University Duisburg-Essen. Her field of research is political system change, minorities and corruption in China. She is currently conducting her Ph.D. thesis at the Institute for East Asian Science at University Duisburg-Essen.
She participated in several research projects supervised by Professor Thomas Heberer on rural administration in China between 2000 and 2006.
Anja Senz will give a joint presentation with Thomas Heberer at our conference. The presentation is entitled "Administrative Constraints of Implementing Environmental Policies at the Local Level in China".
Professor Dieter Grunow, Ph.D.
Dieter Grunow is a professor for political science at University Duisburg-Essen and executive director of Rhein-Ruhr-Institut für Politikberatung [Institute for Political Advisory]. His main research fields are local political administration and reforms, social policy, implementation and modernization processes
He and Professor Thomas Heberer are conducting a research project which focuses on environmental administration in rural China Since 2007. The project aims at identifying administrative practices, deficits and reforms as well as comparing the results to German environmental administrative systems and the experience in the transformation process in East Germany.
Professor Grunow studied sociology, economics, political science and German language and literature studies in Tübingen and Münster, Germany and Jackson, USA.
The presentation he is expected to give at the conference is entitled "Administrative Logic compared: Implementing Environmental Policies in China and Germany".
Professor Thomas Heberer, Ph.D.
Thomas Heberer is professor for political science at the institute for East Asian Science at University Duisburg-Essen, Germany. In his research, he mainly focuses on social change, modernization processes and participation in China.
Since 2007 he and Professor Dieter Grunow are conducting a research project which focuses on environmental administration in rural China. The project aims at identifying administrative practices, deficits and reforms as well as comparing the results to German environmental administrative systems and the experience in the transformation process in East Germany.
Professor Heberer studied political science, ethnology and sinology at the Universities of Frankfurt, Goettingen and Heidelberg, Germany.
At the conference, Professor Heberer will give a presentation in cooperation with his research associate Anja Senz. The presentation is entitled "Adminitrative Constraints of Implementing Environmental Policies at the Local Level in China".
Philipp Schepelmann, Ph.D.
Philipp Schepelmann is a project manager at the institute for Climate, Environment and Energy in Wuppertal, Germany. In his research group on material flows and resource management, his focus is on environmental policy integration, European environmental policy and regional policy.
From 1989 until 1995, Philipp Schepelmann studied Environmental Planning at Technical University Berlin.
At our conference, he will give an overview of the development and implementation of environmental governance in Germany.
Professor Miranda Schreurs
Miranda Schreurs is the director of the Environmental Policy Research Centre and professor of Comparative Politics at Freie Universität Berlin. In July 2008 Miranda Schreurs was appointed to the German Advisory Council on the Environment. In her research, she mainly focuses on comparative environmental politics and policy in Europe, USA, and East Asia.
She took her Ph.D. entitled "Domestic Institutions, International Agendas and Global Environmental Protection in Japan and Germany" at University of Michigan in 1996.
Miranda Schreurs is expected to give a presentation on some basic convergences and divergences in environmental politics in the USA, Germany and East Asia.
Professor Arthur Mol
Arthur Mol is the chair of the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University, Netherlands. Besides he is also president of the Research Committee on Environment and Society of the International Sociological Association and director of the Environmental Research Network Asia.
His main field of expertise is ecological modernization theory, environmental sociology of flows and industrial transformation, especially in Southeast and East Asia, environmental governance and informational governance on the environment.
Arthur Mol has carried out and supervised numerous research projects in various parts of the world such as Southeast and East Asia, Russia, Europe, Latin America, North America and East Africa.
He took his Ph.D. in sociology in 1995 at the University of Amsterdam.
Professor Mol will give a presentation on information disclosure as environmental risk management in China at our conference.
Dr. Horst Pomp MD
Horst Pomp was medical director of Bethesda gynecological hospital in Essen, Germany, between 1972 and 1993.
Since 1971, he has been active in environmental NGOs at national and international level. In numerous environmental protection activities, he mainly focused on air pollution control, efficient energy usage and conservation of natural resources. For his courage in environmental protection, Horst Pomp was rewarded with the Federal Cross of Merit in 2002.
At our conference, Mr Pomp is going to give a presentation on "The Role of German NGOs in Local and Regional Environmental Policy Activities".
Top of Page