About
Professor Alvaro Mendez is the Director of the Global South Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a Senior Associate Fellow at LSE IDEAS. At LSE, he co-teaches the course China and the Global South and is Convenor and Chief Examiner of Foreign Policy Analysis. He received the LSE IR Departmental Teaching Prize in 2004. He is Professor of China’s Diplomacy and the Global South at Sciences Po Paris. At Fudan University’s Institute for Global Public Policy (IGPP) in Shanghai, he is Professor of International Development & China and of Global Governance & International Organizations, and has held Foreign Expert status, awarded by the People’s Republic of China, since 2022.
His research examines how states of the Global South exercise agency in their external relations. Much of it addresses China’s engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean, and the foreign policy strategies through which governments in the region have negotiated that engagement. A second strand examines the new multilateral development banks, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, and the implications of membership for borrowing states. He was previously a Full Research Professor at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, working on a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation on internationalisation, innovation, and social responsibility.
Prof. Mendez is also an Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) and a Founding Member of the Colombian Council of Foreign Affairs (CORI). He is Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming Handbook of International Relations and the Global South (Edward Elgar), with Chris Alden as co-editor, and is a former editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies.
Prof. Mendez has authored, co-authored, or edited numerous books, including Colombian Agency and the Making of US Foreign Policy: Intervention by Invitation (Routledge, 2017); The China-Latin America Axis: Emerging Markets and their Role in an Increasingly Globalised World (Palgrave, 2018); New Development Assistance: Emerging Economies and the New Landscape of Development Assistance (Palgrave, 2020); The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations: The AIIB Membership (Palgrave, 2020); and China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics (Bloomsbury, 2023). A third edition of The China-Latin America Axis, with the new subtitle The Business of Geopolitics, is under contract with Palgrave and due for publication in 2027.
His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in journals including Geopolitics, Global Policy, Management Research, Asia Business & Management, Sustainability, Journal of Business Research, The China Journal, Asia Pacific Business Review, Finance Research Letters, Research in International Business and Finance, and Foreign Policy Analysis.