Helena van der Buchwald has started as a PhD student in China Studies
As of September 1st, Helena van der Buchwald has started as a PhD student in China Studies. She will be working on a project examining how China, through its latest foreign policy initiatives, articulates current and future world orders.
My name is Helena, and I am a new PhD student at the Department of Global Studies. Here, I will be working on my project, Alternative Visions of Global Order: China’s Global Initiatives and the Politics of Meaning-Making, which focuses on China’s global initiatives (四大全球倡议). I approach the initiatives as a coordinated, discursive project that seeks to articulate and visualise a new, alternative world order. Adopting a post structuralist perspective and employing both quantitative and qualitative text analysis methods, I will examine how China uses these initiatives to construct and present new meanings and future horizons, as well as how it seeks to institutionalise them at both regional and international levels.
As I am on the "4+4" track, I am starting with an internship at the Danish United Nations Association (FN Forbundet), where I will initiate and work on various projects that highlights China’s activities within the UN and the Security Council. Once I return from my internship, you will most likely find me near the coffee machine.