Robert Walker

Robert Walker is a visiting fellow having previously been a Joan Shorenstein Fellow during the 2021 Spring Semester. He is interested in impartiality in the international news coverage of international affairs and, in 2021, focused on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. He is currently extending this research with a focus on vaccine diplomacy while simultaneously completing a book on Poverty and the World Order (Agenda Publishing). He is Professor at the China Institute of Social Management/School of Sociology, Beijing Normal University under China’s ‘High Level Foreign Talents’ program and Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford where he is also Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College. He was formerly Professor of Social Policy at the University Nottingham and before that Professor of Social Policy Research, Loughborough University where he was Director of the Centre for Research in Social Policy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Academy of Social Sciences and was awarded an MBE by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 for his services to social policy research. In 2020 and 2021, he was nominated for a Friends of China award by the Chinese Ministry of Education. His research interests are eclectic but include poverty, social security, Chinese social policy, children’s studies, media presentation, policy evaluation and research methodology. He is a regular columnist for China Focus and China Today.