Anna Lisa Ahlers

Anna L. Ahlers is the leader of the Lise Meitner Research Group “China in the Global System of Science” at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), which she founded in 2020. Her current research focuses on the evolution of science policy in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and on the interplay between scientific knowledge and policymaking in contemporary China’s local governance—a trajectory that extends from her earlier intensive studies of the PRC’s political system. More generally, she also examines how authoritarianism and democracy as ambient political conditions shape scientific knowledge production. Taken together, her work contributes to a broader understanding of the dynamic transformations of global science—and its local variants—in the early twenty-first century.

Anna also holds a part time position as Professor II in the Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (IKOS) at the University of Oslo, where she contributes to its collaboration with the Norwegian Centre for Geopolitics. Under her leadership, the Lise Meitner Research Group currently hosts two externally funded projects: “Knowledge for Scientific Cooperation: Research-based and Action-guiding China competence for German Academic Organizations” (Wi-Wi-Ko-China, 2023–2026), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and jointly conducted with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); and “China’s Science Silk Road and the New Geopolitics of Knowledge Production” (2026–2030), funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and co-led by Han Cheng (MPIWG) and Hang Zhou (Université Laval). From the second half of 2026, Anna will carry out a new project on China’s rapidly expanding international big science projects and large-scale research infrastructure within the DFG-funded Research Unit “Learning Empire”. 

Anna studied sinology and political science at the University of Tübingen, Peking University, and Renmin University, and completed her doctorate in China studies at the University of Tübingen in 2013. Before joining the MPIWG in January 2020, she was a tenured Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Society and Politics at the University of Oslo, and has also worked at the University of Bonn (Forum Internationale Wissenschaft, FIW), the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin (MERICS), Academia Sinica (RoC), and the University of Chicago. Between 2017 and 2022 she was a member of the Junge Akademie (BBAW and Leopoldina), and in 2020/21 a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Anna’s recent book publications include The Great Smog of China: A Short Event History of Air Pollution (co-authored with Mette Halskov Hansen and Rune Svarverud) and Democratic and Authoritarian Political Systems in 21st Century World Society (with Damien Krichewsky, Evelyn Moser, and Rudolf Stichweh). She is a member of the editorial board of the Environments of East Asia series (Cornell University Press), a member of the international advisory board of the Routledge Studies on Local China series, and a member of the executive committee of the European Journal of East Asian Studies (Brill). A full list of publications is available for download here, and further information can be found on her Google Scholar profile.