Qingren Chen
School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London
Qingren Chen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Queen Mary University of London, working on the ERC-funded Illicit Labour project. His current research examines the evolution of China’s photovoltaic industry and its implications for global production networks, labour regimes, and informality. Drawing on cultural political economy, evolutionary economic geography, and institutional approaches, his work explores how industries and supply chains are shaped by institutional change, economic restructuring, and the agency of individual actors.
Qingren completed his PhD in Geography at Durham University, where he investigated the transformation of China’s logistics industry from an internalised system under the planned economy to a multi-tiered outsourcing structure. His broader research interests include industrial evolution, supply chains, institutions and embeddedness, cultural political economy, geopolitics, and the political ecology of renewable energy.