Dr. Tengteng Zhuang is currently an Associate Professor at Institute of Higher Education, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, which is one of the leading institutions in education science in Asia and the world at large (7th QS Ranking 2025). Having a dual background of engineering and education, he is focused on university-industry collaboration supported by a national youth project he has undertaken. He has published more than a dozen SSCI-indexed journal articles on this topic and other higher education issues, including Higher Education Research and Development (HERD), Studies in Higher Education, etc. He has been the principal investigator of several projects pertaining to teaching-focused university-industry collaboration in China, Asia and Europe in recent years. As an Asian scholar, he has also served as the main consultant for a Hungarian project on learning from Asia and China's university-industry collaboration. As an emerging scholar in the field, his most recent book are entitled Engineering Teaching in China’s Higher Education: A Social Realistic Approach and Modernizing China's Undergraduate Engineering Education through Systematic Reforms: Ideas, Practices and Impact. He is now working on his 3rd monograph on China's systematic measures on skill development-focused University-industry Collaboration.

I am a current Ph.D. candidate specializing in higher education policy and management, with a focus on the interplay between institutional change and individual development. My research aims to bridge macro-level policy analysis and micro-level educational practices. I actively engage with academic communities both domestically and internationally and have presented my findings at conferences such as the Annual Conference on Higher Education and the Graduate Education Forum. Looking ahead, I intend to explore the themes of “differentiation of academic career pathways” and “micro-level mechanisms of higher education quality assurance.” In particular, I am interested in examining how universities can leverage institutional innovation to balance the pursuit of academic excellence with humanistic concerns amid ongoing digital transformation, global competition, and shifts in the academic labor market.

Duishon Shamatov is a graduate of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, Canada, where he earned a PhD in Education. He is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Education, Nazarbayev University. His research focuses on teacher development, university admissions, doctoral education, and university reform in post-Soviet contexts, particularly in Central Asia. Duishon has led and collaborated on international research projects funded by the Jacobs Foundation and Aga Khan Foundation and actively contributes to regional academic networks and policy consultancy for Ministries of Education in Central Asia.

Bowen Song is a PhD candidate at the School of Education, Renmin University of China. My research interests include higher education management and education policy. My current work explores the mobility of senior university leaders from the perspective of higher education personnel management, with particular attention to how leadership mobility reflects organisational structures and modes of operation in university governance.