Individual projects:

Morten Koch Andersen
Mobilisation and Social Navigation in Student Politics at Dhaka University, Bangladesh. (PhD project)
This project opens the politics of violence and youth mobilisation in Bangladesh and how this mobilisation informs governance, politics and authority. State formation, state authority and development (definition of and control over) have been at the centre of political contest, governance and social life since independence in 1971, recently accentuated by a military backed coup d'état in 2007. A main argument is that state formation and authority are informed by violent encounters between state and youth that accentuates governance, political legitimacy and citizenship. The project centres on the youth in student politics at the universities as sites of incubation for political leaders and state bureaucracy. The aim is to explore the interplay between the youth's efforts to manage livelihood and navigate for life chances within the organisations, and the organisations efforts to mobilise and guide youth to advance political projects of state formation, nationality and development.

Keywords: violence, youth mobilisation, politics and governance

Johan Fischer
On the halal frontier: Consuming Malays in London (post-doc project)
In my post-doc research project I explore modern forms of halal understanding and practice among Malay Muslims in London. This project takes as its point of departure research I have conducted on the interfaces between the state, consumption, Islamic revivalism and the marketplace in Malaysia. Halal is no longer an expression of esoteric forms of production, trade and consumption. It is part of a huge and expanding globalised market.

Keywords: state, markets, consumption, Islamic revivalism, halal

Daniel Fleming and Henrik Søborg
Labour markets and human resource development strategies in Malaysia and Singapore
Our research field is comparative analysis of Asian labour markets, industrial relations, training and education in economies in transition from labour intensive to more knowledge intensive forms of industrialisation, especially focussing on HRD strategies of foreign and domestic companies and related government incentives in Malaysia and Singapore for training and education in the private sector. The methodology used is company case studies in a comprehensive comparative analysis - comparison of policy set-up in Malaysia and Singapore, of foreign and domestic companies, of the different individual company cases and their strategies. Both countries follow a privatisation strategy but with several exceptions to neoliberal market policies.

As the discussion on neoliberalism and alternatives to neoliberalism strongly influences labour market policies and educational strategies in Malaysia and Singapore, this discussion is also influencing our case studies, including the specific type of company HR strategy. In both countries the state is strongly involved in industrial upgrading and not withdrawing from influencing labour markets and human resource development. It has successfully built up partnership arrangement with leading national and multinational companies within training and education. We are studying these partnership arrangements as alternatives to the neoliberal marketisation strategy. In the current debate on ways out of the financial crisis the Singaporean model of combining state and market has attracted renewed attention.

Keywords: labour market, human resource development strategies, public-private partnership, market regulation

Peter Kragelund
Chinese Drivers for African Development (post-doc project)
This post doc project concerns China's renewed political and economic global interests. It looks specifically at Chinese companies' investments in three key sectors of the Zambian economy and seeks to further our understanding of the impacts of these investments for the domestic private sector in Zambia. Thereby, it touches upon issues of upgrading, national and global regulation, the room for national investment policies, and the role of foreign entrepreneurs in national politics. Moreover, it seeks to unravel the often interwoven vectors of Chinese engagement with African economies.

Keywords: China in Africa, policy space, private sector development, Western and Southern Africa.

Laurids S. Lauridsen
Globalisation, Governance and Economic Transformation
The project deals with the link between processes of globalisation, forms of governance and economic transformation with a particular emphasis on industrial transformation. While most scholars agree that governance and institutions matters for processes of economic/industrial transformation, there is no agreement concerning the specific nature of governance and the specific nature growth- (and welfare-) enhancing strategies. The present research project challenges the prevailing neoliberal post-Washington approach with its emphasis on "good governance" and "an enabling business environment" and "private sector development". The project instead seeks to study the content, potential and feasibility of an alternative heterodox approach with emphasis on "developmental governance" and "strategic intervention". A major field of study is also how different global actors advance different strategies of governance and economic transformation, and how processes of globalisation and global actors impact upon the "policy space". Geographically, the emphasis is on emerging economies in East- and Southeast Asia.

Keywords:  the limits of neoliberalism, developmental state, industrial transformation, policy space, East-and Southeast Asia

Jakob Lindahl
Linking up to East Asian production networks. Regional production networks and its impact on industrial udgrading in Vietnam. (PhD project)
This PhD project deals with regional value chains from East Asia to Vietnam. It aims to explore their impact on upgrading on respectively intra-firm, inter-firm and extra-firm levels in the Vietnamese footwear and seafood industry. The global value chain approach provides a framework for studying industrial restructuring in East Asia and Vietnam's position in the industry, and thus the country's prospects for upgrading in both private and state-owned enterprises are analysed. The project focuses on differences - and also reasons for upgrading failures and successes - between ethnic Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. The empirical methodology is mainly qualitative, and explores upgrading in investment receiving enterprises in respectively Hanoi, Hai Phong, Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta.

Keywords: global value chains, industrial upgrading, footwear, seafood, Vietnam

Birger Linde
Transformation and Crisis in the World Economy
The ongoing financial crisis interacts with a broader downturn in the global economy. My research investigates the historical background and the actual development of the crisis, with a special view on the long-range economic and political transformations elicited or reinforced by the economic turbulence. Points of special focus: a) The threatened position of the US as economic and political superpower; b) The rise of Asia and China; c) The changing relations between mature western high-income civilisations    and rising, commodity rich emerging powers.

Keywords: financial crisis, US hegemony, China

Mette Kjær Petersen
Educating innovative graduates for the Chinese economy? Higher education reform in China (PhD project)
The Chinese government is seeking to transform the economy from "Made in China" to "Designed in China" through the principle of ‘Revitalizing China through science and education'. That is, higher education has come to play a direct role in China's development process. In the mid-1990s the government launched a comprehensive higher education reform that should build "quality education" and educate "specialized talents with innovative spirit and practical capability". The research project is an institutional study of how a country in rapid transformation translate the globally articulated neoliberal idea that ‘innovative competence development is a fundamental lever for becoming a competitive knowledge economy' into a national development strategy. It also studies how local actors in a business university renegotiate the strategy and construct the drivers and barriers that shape the process of changing the institutional conditions for educating innovative and practical graduates.

Keywords:  higher education reform, knowledge economy, institutions, local actors, China