Jonathan Benney

Before coming to Monash, I was a lecturer at Macquarie University; a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for U.S.-China Issues at the University of Oklahoma; a visiting researcher on the LOEWE Research Focus project ‘Extrajudicial and Judicial Conflict Resolution’ at the Goethe University Frankfurt; and a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.

Before starting my academic career, I studied and worked in Australia, China, and Taiwan. I finished my PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2010.

My first book, Defending Rights in Contemporary China, was published by Routledge in 2013.

I study contentious politics and political communication in modern China, with particular emphasis on new media, aesthetics, activism, dispute resolution, the role of law and rights, and the history of ideas. I’m also increasingly interested in how Chinese culture and society are taught and learnt at secondary schools and universities.
Together with the Debaters Association of Victoria and the Monash Association of Debaters, I organise the yearly Monash Asian Studies Debating Competition for secondary schools.