Dr Yuzhou Sun

Headshot of IAS Fellow Youzhou Sun

IAS Open Programme

Fudan University

Dr Yuzhou (Jodie) Sun is Senior Lecturer in Modern African and Global History at the Department of History, Fudan University, China and Research Fellow of the International Studies Group, University of the Free State, South Africa. She holds an MSc in African Studies and a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford. Her research interests are modern African history, Cold War history and China-Africa relations.

Her first monograph (Kenya's and Zambia's Relations with China 1949-2019, James Currey, 2023) examines the history of post-colonial Kenya’s and Zambia’s relations with the People’s Republic of China from ideological, political, economic and social perspectives. She has published in Cold War HistoryInternational Journal of African Historical StudiesJournal of Southern African Studies, and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Read more about her work here.

She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is an Executive Board member of the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network and the founder of China-Africa Shanghai International Network (CASIN). As a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center for African Studies in 2023-24, she will conduct research on ‘Third World Crossings’: Afro-Asian Networks, Decolonisation and the Cold War as well as deliver a course tentatively titled ‘Africa and China: Pasts and Presents’.

During their IAS Fellowship, Dr Sun is collaborating with Dr Thoralf Klein from the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.