Tao Zou
PhD student
Research interests
- International development
- Economics
- Business
- Policy
Biography
Tao is a King's Joint Scholarship-funded PhD candidate in International Economics at King's College London. He is a 25/26 Miguel Dols Fellow at the Cañada Blanch Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he also serves as a Guest Teacher in the Department of Economics. Before coming to King's, he studied at LSE and the University of Manchester.
Harbouring a profound passion for international business strategy, Tao has been selected as a 2025 recipient of the Strategy Research Foundation (SRF) Will Mitchell Dissertation Research Grant. He serves as Counsellor of the AIB-CIBER Doctoral Academy following his selection for the two-year programme funded by the Sheth Foundation Fellowship. At the 2024 AIB, his research was nominated for the UNCTAD-AIB Award for Best Research on Investment and Development. He had an enjoyable time at the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, where he worked on policy-oriented research on AI for development.
Research
Thesis title: 'Essays on Outward FDI and development: Rethinking MNE global strategies through a GVC lens'
Tao's research is rooted in International Business Strategy, Political Economy of Trade, and Economic Geography of Innovation, focusing on the development dilemmas of multinational enterprises through a global value chain perspective, as well as relocation strategies in the context of US-China decoupling. The research aims to contribute insights from rigorous academic theory and empirical analysis to policy and strategy practice.
PhD supervision
- Principal supervisor: Dr Yundan Gong
- Secondary supervisor: Dr Jan Knoerich
Further Details
Research
Global Production, Finance and Labour research group
A multidisciplinary research group that explores inclusive and sustainable growth.
Chinese International Investments research group
We examine how Chinese companies and government initiatives have made China a new source of large-scale capital investments and business activities in a variety of sectors.
Technology, Inequality, and Development research group
We are an interdisciplinary collective within the Department of International Development with two related concerns: the rise of AI and cutting-edge technologies and inequalities of income, wealth and power.
Global Capitalism, Power & Uneven Development research group
We study the many ways in which the world-system unevenly constrains and drives development everywhere, with its persistent structural hierarchies, dependencies, contradictions, and unequal power relations between classes, ethnicities, genders, races, and states.
Research
Global Production, Finance and Labour research group
A multidisciplinary research group that explores inclusive and sustainable growth.
Chinese International Investments research group
We examine how Chinese companies and government initiatives have made China a new source of large-scale capital investments and business activities in a variety of sectors.
Technology, Inequality, and Development research group
We are an interdisciplinary collective within the Department of International Development with two related concerns: the rise of AI and cutting-edge technologies and inequalities of income, wealth and power.
Global Capitalism, Power & Uneven Development research group
We study the many ways in which the world-system unevenly constrains and drives development everywhere, with its persistent structural hierarchies, dependencies, contradictions, and unequal power relations between classes, ethnicities, genders, races, and states.