Julia Youjia Hoffmann

Julia is an MPhil student in International Relations at St Antony's College. Her research interests include constructivist theory, decolonial theory, East Asian International Relations, and the geopolitics of China. Before coming to Oxford, Julia completed her bachelor's in International Relations at King's College London. She now hopes to pursue a career in political publishing or policy analysis. To this end, Julia works on the editorial teams of the Oxford Political Review, The Oxford Diplomatic Dispatch, The Cherwell, and manages Oxford's premier satirical newspaper, The Oxymoron, as Editor-in-Chief. As a fellow of the Oxford China Policy Lab, she works with similarly minded colleagues on producing policy-relevant research aimed at mitigating the global risks arising from the great power competition between the United States and China.

Research

During her undergraduate at King's College London, Julia undertook coursework in modules including International Relations Theory, History of the International System, Contemporary Strategy in East Asia, US-China Relations, and the Politics of Authoritarianism. In her BA dissertation, she examined the legitimacy of China's policy model of environmental authoritarianism. Drawing on democratic and non-democratic legitimacy theories, she formulated an analytical framework constituted of performance, throughput and foundational legitimacy criteria, against which China's "authoritarian alternative" was measured.

For her MPhil thesis, Julia plans to conduct a comparative analysis of how different countries discuss and remember China's Century of Humiliation. While this topic has been extensively covered from the Chinese perspective, she believes that exploring how other nations, particularly those implicated in this time period, recall China's historical traumas can provide valuable insights for fostering improved contemporary Sino relations.