To commemorate the Youth Day and 119 Years’ Anniversary of Peking University, Yenching Scholars and international students of PKU gathered together to send out their best wishes to the world!
As one of the few universities in China with more than 100 years’ history, PKU has attracted more and more international students every year. Every year, more and more students and alumni celebrate the anniversary. They are happy, proud and making difference to the world.
Johannes Volkmann is a German national who partially grew up in Canada. He is an undergraduate senior at Zeppelin University majoring in Sociology, Politics and Economics.
His thesis on competitive electoral studies was published with Springer Science. Johannes experiences include working for Ernst&Young, the German government and multiple European election campaigns. He is also a youth representative at the Paneuropean Working Group in the European Parliament. Before enrolling at Peking University, he spent the previous semester in Shanghai studying Sino-European economic relations. Currently Johannes is a volunteer for Radio Beijing International.
Cody Abbey studied public and international affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, graduating with a thesis that analyzed China's college entrance examination. Cody’s interests include Chinese education, language, and theatre, and he actively engages in a variety of cultural projects in both China and the United States.While at the Yenching Academy, he further pursued his interest in China's higher education system.
Originally from the United States, Olivia Bergen graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi in 2015 with a major in political science and a minor in East Asian studies. As an undergraduate,she spent a semester and winter term in Shanghai studying Chinese language, politics,and education and wrote a senior thesis on gender and campaign finance in U.S. elections. She also taught and carried out research at NYU Shanghai on a year-long Global Academic Fellowship. As a Yenching Scholar, is concentrating in Politics and International Relations, where she is focusing on women’s political participation and leadership in China. She aspires to a career in NGOs and IGOs that engage citizens in the political process worldwide.
Ravi Prasad is British with Indian heritage. He studied Economics at the University of Cambridge and graduated in 2015. During his time at Cambridge, Ravi organized conferences on the subjects of International Relations and Economic Development; the latter facilitating the first meeting between H.E Liu Xiaoming and H.E Ranjan Mathai(Chinese and Indian Ambassadors to the UK). In 2012, Ravi was announced as one of three Top Young Economists by the Royal Economic Society and in 2015 he led the UK team to second place in KPMG's International Consulting Championships in Dubai. Ravi was an exchange student at Princeton University in 2014, and has previously interned at the UN and written for The Times. He worked for Goldman Sachs in London in their Thematic Research Division where he focused on Chinese economic growth and more recently on the rise of the Tech Sector. At Yenching Academy, Ravi is pursuing the Economics & Management concentration. His interests lie in the interaction of Chinese and Indian economic growth on global asset markets, as well as Anglo-Chinese trade relations. Ravi is looking forward to exploring these issues in more depth at YCA.
Maximilian Rmer is a German national who studied at Leiden University, where he majored in International Studies with concentrations in both East Asian Studies and Public Policy. In addition, he has gained multifaceted experiences in various countries working with the German parliament, the International Energy Agency, different NGOs, and on consultancy projects. Having spent a semester at the University of Hong Kong and also having volunteered in Taipei, Maximilian is excited to truly explore political and cultural processes in Chinese society. At the Yenching Academy he is specializing in Economics and Management, in order to deepen his expertise on trade issues related to the One Belt-One Road Initiative and its implications for Eurasia. He hopes that nurturing his linguistic abilities and understanding of China will enable him to further improve Sino-European relations in the future.
Zhi-Xiang Teo was born in the United States, and grew up in Northern California. She completed her undergraduate degree in History at Stanford University, with a focus on U.S. history and modern Chinese history. She also graduated with minors in Economics and Creative Writing. She wrote an honors thesis on Hu Shi (1891-1962), a prominent Chinese philosopher, and received a major grant from Stanford's Undergraduate Advising and Research to conduct research on him during the summer of 2015. She also served as a research assistant for the Chinese Railroad Worker’s Project, which seeks to give a voice to the Chinese migrant laborers who helped to shape the physical and social landscape of the American West. As a production intern for Forum, a radio talk show that airs on National Public Radio’s local station in San Francisco (KQED), she produced and directed a show about the Railroad Worker’s Project. Because of her interest in journalism, cross-cultural communication, and public policy, she is pursuing the Politics and International Relations track at Yenching Academy. In her spare time, she enjoys playing piano, and performed Saint-Sans’ Second Piano Concerto as the featured soloist with the Stanford Philharmonic Orchestra in their winter concert in 2016.
Satria Sambijantorois studying public policy at Peking University's School of Government, receiving full scholarship from the Chinese government. He is a journalist with The Jakarta Post, the largest English-language newspaper in Indonesia, and has published more than 600 articles on macroeconomics, financial markets, banking, politics and foreign policy. Before his study at Peking University, he was the newspaper's correspondent at the Presidential Palace, where he was tasked to analyze the macroeconomic policies of President Joko Widodo.
Source: Radio Beijing International
