Areas of Expertise

• Chinese foreign policy 
• East Asia
• Indo-Pacific 
• Connectivity (infrastructure, digital) 
• Trade, investment, and development 
• Global governance

Short Bio

Dr. Yuka Kobayashi is a British Academy Global Innovation Fellow in DGAP’s Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology. She is on leave from SOAS, University of London where she is senior lecturer (associate professor) of China and international politics. Previously, she was a junior research fellow at Oxford University, a visiting scholar at the World Trade Organization, and a visiting research professor at Nankai University.

At DGAP, Kobayashi will conduct research on Germany and Europe’s response to Chinese investments and link this work to broader questions related to China and world order/disorder. She has advised various governments and international organizations on these issues. She was appointed as specialist advisor to the UK government in 2021 and served as an advisory board member of Stiftung Asienhaus from 2019 to 2021.

Kobayashi studied law with a specialization in public international law at Kyoto University and read for an MPhil and DPhil in international relations at Oxford University. Her research brings together international relations and international law with fieldwork to examine the influence of China’s political economy at the regional and global level. She has conducted various research projects on China’s global governance and China’s economic activities abroad in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Island states.  
 

Languages

English, Japanese, and Mandarin (Chinese)

[Last updated: November 2024]