People

Yang Zhang

AFFILIATION
International Relations Network
College
St Antony's College
Course
MPhil International Relations
supervisor

Yang Zhang is a first-year MPhil student at Oxford University reading International Relations. Her academic interests include energy and climate change, international political economy, and international order. Yang's MPhil research focuses on how the expectation of future energy trade shapes German foreign policies towards Russia. Besides academics, Yang is involved in Agora Oxford, a grassroots foreign policy think tank, and St Antony's Boat Club.

Before Oxford, Yang graduated from Colgate University with a BA in Political Science, Russian and Eurasian Studies. Her undergraduate thesis focuses on the conditions conducive to militarised territorial disputes between China and its neighbours in contemporary times. In 2021, Yang researched US-China relations and the Biden administration's foreign policy on China when she participated in the Young Ambassadors' Program at Carnegie Tsinghua Center. As a James Madison summer research fellow in 2020, she conducted a comparative study of Russia and the US's COVID-19 pandemic responses. Yang also has internship experience at the International Organization for Migration (Geneva HQ) and other impact-oriented organizations.