Professor Peter Nolan

Peter Nolan has researched, written, and taught on a wide range of issues in economic development, globalisation, and the transition of former planned economies.

Academic interests

Peter Nolan's academic interests include:

• Comparative development in China and India
• Chinese agriculture
• System change in China and the former USSR
• Poverty, famine, inequality, and migration
• Restructuring large global firms in the era of the Global Business Revolution
• The transformation of large Chinese firms since the 1980s
• The evolution of China’s political economy
• The interaction between Chinese and the global firms in the era of the Global Business Revolution
• The contradictory character of capitalist globalisation.

Degrees obtained

• MA (Cantab.).
• MSc.
• PhD (London).

Biography

Peter Nolan is the Founding Director of the University’s Centre of Development Studies and the Director of Jesus College's China Forum.

He is the Director of the Chinese Executive Leadership Programme (CELP), which each year brings Chief Executives from China’s largest firms to the University of Cambridge for a three week training programme, taught by academics and the leaders of international firms.

The Financial Times commented: "Nolan knows more about Chinese companies and their international competition than anyone else on earth, including in China".

Peter Nolan has spoken at the Chinese Government’s annual China Development Forum since its inception in 2000. He has testified at the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission of the US Congress and lectured to the Board of the US-China Business Council. He is a member of the UK Government’s Asia Task Force and the China Council of the World Economic Forum. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Copenhagen Business School.

In 2009 he was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) "for services supporting China’s integration into the global economy".