Sean Kenji Starrs

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Sean Kenji (賢司) Starrs researches about US hegemony and the rise of China in global capitalism. He argues that we must reconceptualise national economic power in the age of globalization, moving beyond national accounts like GDP to measure "national corporate power" encompassing the global operations of transnational corporations. Recently he has written about China-US techno-nationalist rivalry, particularly in semiconductors.

He joined the Department of International Development at King's College London in September 2022. From 2014-2021 he was at the Department of Asian and International Studies at City University of Hong Kong. He was also a visiting assistant professor at the Center for International Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received his PhD at York University, Toronto, under the late (and great) Leo Panitch.

He has written for and/or been cited/interviewed by Bloomberg News, CNN, The Daily Mail, The Financial Times, Newsweek, Politico, South China Morning Post, local Hong Kong radio and TV, Voice of America, Jacobin, The Real News, Washington Post, among others, on many topics ranging from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests to Oxfam’s report on inequality, Marxism in China to Brexit, US hegemony to the capitalist rise of China. Noam Chomsky has claimed Sean is “one of the most important political economists in the world”, and cites his work often, including in The Economist and Truthdig.

Experience

  • 2022–present
    Lecturer in International Development, King's College London
  • 2021–2022
    Lecturer in International Political Economy, City, University of London
  • 2014–2021
    Assistant Professor in International Relations, City University of Hong Kong
  • 2014–2016
    Visiting Assistant Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Education

  • 2014 
    York University (Toronto), PhD

Publications

  • 2025
    Can China Challenge the US Empire?, Transnational Institute
  • 2024
    The geographies and geopolitics of industrial policy: Designing a data-driven UK semiconductor strategy, European Urban and Regional Studies
  • 2024
    A Chip War Made in Germany? US Techno‐Dependencies, China Chokepoints, and the German Semiconductor Industry, Politics & Governance
  • 2021
    Responding to the China Challenge in Techno-Nationalism: Divergence Between Germany and the United States, Development & Change
  • 2017
    The Global Capitalism School Tested in Asia: Transnational Capitalist Class vs Taking the State Seriously, Journal of Contemporary Asia
  • 2014
    The Chimera of Global Convergence, New Left Review
  • 2013
    American Economic Power Hasn't Declined--It Globalized! Summoning the Data and Taking Globalization Seriously, International Studies Quarterly

Contact Sean for

  • General
  • Media request
  • Speaking request
  • Consulting / Advising
  • Research collaboration
  • Research supervision