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About
Timothy Hildebrandt is Associate Professor of Social Policy and Development, Deputy Head of Department (Teaching), and co-Editor of The China Quarterly. His research examines state–society relations, citizenship and civic engagement, and the governance of civil society in authoritarian contexts, with a particular focus on China.
His work combines large-scale original data — including five waves of the Civic Participation in China Survey (some 16,000 urban residents, 2018–2026) and a registration dataset of over 860,000 Chinese NGOs — with a citizenship-as-practice approach to understanding how ordinary people engage the authoritarian state. The work spans social policy, political science, China studies, and the politics of sexuality. His book, Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013 (paperback 2015), and his research appears in journals including Governance, Democratization, and The China Quarterly.
His teaching, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, focuses on social policy and development, non-governmental organisations, and sexuality. He serves frequently as an expert witness in asylum cases in the UK and US. His work is widely covered in international news media, with interviews, op-eds, and commentaries in outlets including The Guardian, the BBC, CNN, and the South China Morning Post.
Tim is a member of the governing council of the LSE-Fudan Research Centre for Global Public Policy and sits on the editorial board of Global Public Policy and Governance