Prof. Dr. Klaus Mühlhahn
Prof. Dr. Klaus Mühlhahn
President, Zeppelin University
Klaus Mühlhahn studied Chinese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and National Taiwan Normal University and graduated in 1993 with a Master degree. He obtained a PhD in 1998 at the Institute of Chinese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. His German dissertation “Rule and Resistance in Kiaochow” received the annual Joachim Tiburtius Award of the Berlin Senate. From 2002 to 2004 he was a visiting fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley. In 2004, he accepted a position at the University of Turku in Finland, where he taught as a professor of Contemporary Chinese and Asian History at the Institute of History and at the Center for East Asian Studies. In 2007 he was appointed professor of modern Chinese history at Indiana University, Bloomington. In 2020 he returned to Berlin, teaching as professor of history and culture of modern China at Freie Universität Berlin. He also served as Vice-President of Freie Universität Berlin from 2014 to 2020. In 2020 he was appointed as president of Zeppelin University.
Klaus Mühlhahn has published widely on modern Chinese history in English, German, and Chinese and is a frequent commentator on China for the German media. His book "Criminal Justice in China", published 2009 in the Harvard University Press was awarded the John K. Fairbank-price for East Asian History by the American Historical Association. His most recent book “Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping”, again published by the Harvard University Press in January 2019, rewriteas China’s history, telling a story of crisis and recovery, exploring the versatility and resourcefulness essential for China’s current development as well as its future possibilities.
