Anna L. Ahlers

Anna L. Ahlers is Research Group Leader of the Lise Meitner Research Group “China in the Global System of Science” at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, which she founded in 2020. She also holds a part-time position as Professor II in the Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oslo. Trained as a sinologist and political scientist, her research examines how China’s scientific development both shapes and is shaped by domestic and international politics. Her work focuses in particular on China’s political system, especially local governance and policy implementation, the political sociology of China’s science system, and the transformation of global science in the twenty-first century. She also works on comparative questions of contemporary authoritarianism.