New PDRA Appointments

We welcome three new post-doctoral research associates to the ‘China, Law and Development’ (CLD) research project team:

Dr Do Hai Ha is an expert on Vietnamese labour law. Ha trained in law in both Vietnam and Australia, completing a PhD in 2017 at the University of Melbourne Law School where he is now a research fellow. He has worked extensively with international development organizations, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and local lawyer associations.

Dr Miriam Driessen is an anthropologist with several years of experience in working on the Chinese presence in Ethiopia. She obtained her DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2015, and is now a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Oxford. Miriam’s core focus is on bringing an anthropological dimension to the study of Chinese in-migration into Africa and its effects on labour and economic development.

Dr Irna Hofman is a rural sociologist with a focus on sustainable development and agrarian and social change; specifically, on the Chinese presence in the agricultural industry in Central Asia. Irna received her doctorate from Leiden University in 2018. She is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Area Studies in Leiden and a research consultant at the International Organization for Migration in Tajikistan.

All three researchers will start in September 2019, and contribute to the overall aim of the CLD project: to analyse Chinese approaches to law and development in recipient or host states where ‘law and development’ pertains to the role of law and legal institutions in promoting economic growth and sustainability.