Welcome! I'm an Associate Professor at The University of Melbourne's Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies. I also serve as Deputy Associate Dean International (China) in the Faculty of Arts. Before coming to Melbourne, I worked at the Sociology Department at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). I served as the inaugural Director of the Centre for Social Innovation Studies at CUHK and was affiliated as a research fellow with the School of Philanthropy at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.
My research on China encompasses political sociology, civil society, globalisation, organisational development, and philanthropy. I study Chinese and outside organisations working on environmental issues, labor rights, HIV-AIDS, education, and other concerns that have arisen in the context of rapid urbanisation and fundamental policy changes since the early 1980s. I typically employ qualitative methods (interviews and participant-observation) in my research but have also conducted some of the first larger-scale quantitative studies of grassroots NGOs and philanthropy in China.
With my colleague Akihiro Ogawa, I have co-edited two books in the past few years. Varieties of Civil Society Across Asia (2024) is a collection of case studies that reveal how civil society across the region has devised diverse approaches and solutions to a variety of social and political issues. Authoritarianism and Civil Society in Asia (2022) includes contributions from a range of junior and senior experts on civil society in Asia as well as my own chapter on China's INGO Law.
My recent article (with Ken Setiawan), "Global Concepts, Local Meanings: How Civil Society Interprets and Uses Human Rights in Asia," kicks off a special issue of the Asian Studies Review on human rights and civil society in Asia that I co-edited with Ken. Another article (with Weijun Lai), "Marketization and Its Discontents: Unveiling the Impacts of Foundation-led Venture Philanthropy on Grassroots NGOs in China," is available on The China Quarterly website now. My work on China's Charity Law was published in 2020 as "Regulation as Political Control: China’s First Charity Law and Its Implications for Civil Society," in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ). Other recent articles include "Advocacy in an Authoritarian State: How Grassroots Environmental NGOs Influence Local Governments in China" (published in The China Journal and co-authored with my former student, Jingyun Dai) and "Chinese Youth and Alternative Narratives of Volunteering" in China Information. My research into foreign influences on Chinese civil society, Chinese grassroots NGOs, Chinese philanthropy, and relations between NGOs and the Chinese state has appeared in The China Quarterly, The China Journal, The American Journal of Sociology, and The Journal of Civil Society and is available on my Publications page.
I received my undergraduate degree in Asian Studies at Occidental College, and during my studies there I spent a year at Nanjing University and Beijing University as an exchange student. After working in Taiwan in the 1990s, I returned to the US to study at Yale University, where I obtained an MA degree in East Asian Studies and an MA, MPhil, and PhD in Sociology. During the early ‘00s, I spent three years with the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, where I co-founded and worked as Assistant Editor of YaleGlobal Online.
-- Anthony J. Spires
My research on China encompasses political sociology, civil society, globalisation, organisational development, and philanthropy. I study Chinese and outside organisations working on environmental issues, labor rights, HIV-AIDS, education, and other concerns that have arisen in the context of rapid urbanisation and fundamental policy changes since the early 1980s. I typically employ qualitative methods (interviews and participant-observation) in my research but have also conducted some of the first larger-scale quantitative studies of grassroots NGOs and philanthropy in China.
With my colleague Akihiro Ogawa, I have co-edited two books in the past few years. Varieties of Civil Society Across Asia (2024) is a collection of case studies that reveal how civil society across the region has devised diverse approaches and solutions to a variety of social and political issues. Authoritarianism and Civil Society in Asia (2022) includes contributions from a range of junior and senior experts on civil society in Asia as well as my own chapter on China's INGO Law.
My recent article (with Ken Setiawan), "Global Concepts, Local Meanings: How Civil Society Interprets and Uses Human Rights in Asia," kicks off a special issue of the Asian Studies Review on human rights and civil society in Asia that I co-edited with Ken. Another article (with Weijun Lai), "Marketization and Its Discontents: Unveiling the Impacts of Foundation-led Venture Philanthropy on Grassroots NGOs in China," is available on The China Quarterly website now. My work on China's Charity Law was published in 2020 as "Regulation as Political Control: China’s First Charity Law and Its Implications for Civil Society," in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ). Other recent articles include "Advocacy in an Authoritarian State: How Grassroots Environmental NGOs Influence Local Governments in China" (published in The China Journal and co-authored with my former student, Jingyun Dai) and "Chinese Youth and Alternative Narratives of Volunteering" in China Information. My research into foreign influences on Chinese civil society, Chinese grassroots NGOs, Chinese philanthropy, and relations between NGOs and the Chinese state has appeared in The China Quarterly, The China Journal, The American Journal of Sociology, and The Journal of Civil Society and is available on my Publications page.
I received my undergraduate degree in Asian Studies at Occidental College, and during my studies there I spent a year at Nanjing University and Beijing University as an exchange student. After working in Taiwan in the 1990s, I returned to the US to study at Yale University, where I obtained an MA degree in East Asian Studies and an MA, MPhil, and PhD in Sociology. During the early ‘00s, I spent three years with the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, where I co-founded and worked as Assistant Editor of YaleGlobal Online.
-- Anthony J. Spires
Photos of Central Australia and the Generalife Gardens of Alhambra (c) 2015 Anthony J. Spires
