Reza Hasmath (Ph.D., Cambridge) is a Full Professor in Political Science at the University of Alberta. He has previously held faculty positions in management, sociology and political science at the Universities of Toronto, Melbourne and Oxford, and has worked for think-tanks, consultancies, development agencies, and NGOs in USA, Canada, UK, Australia and China. He was formally trained in philosophy, public policy, international studies and diplomacy, and social and political sciences, as well as in various East Asian and European languages. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Civil Society, and is the Foundation Editor of the Routledge Research on the Politics and Sociology of China book series.

His award-winning research is supported by several multi-year grant schemes, notably from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and can be summarized in fivefold: (1) examining the life course experiences (e.g. from education to the labour market), and public management, of ethnic minorities in global contexts; (2) analyzing state-society relationships in China, and how the activities of emerging state and non-state actors potentially affect salient theories, practices and assumptions in international development and global affairs; (3) assessing the evolving behaviour of policy actors and citizens, and their subsequent impact on advanced authoritarian regimes; (4) evaluating global social and economic sustainability, and the development of environmental, social and corporate governance principles and practices; and, (5) probing into the essentialist qualities of the self, community and state through their performative interplay in the public domain.