Gioia Serena Wang was born and raised in Shanghai in an Italian-Chinese family. She graduated from the London School of Economics with a BSc in Politics and International Relations. Fascinated by the complexities of China-Africa relations, she has focused her academic and professional work on both the top-down dimensions of China’s engagement with Africa–particularly in development finance and security–and the bottom-up dynamics of Chinese migration and interactions with host communities, including Chinese migrants’ participation in Ghana’s small-scale mining sector. Before coming to Georgetown, Serena interned at the Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) and Afrobarometer in Accra, Ghana. There, she served as an election observer during the December 2024 elections, wrote donor reports for the 2024 constitutional review committee, and conducted research on the spillover of terrorism from the Sahel into coastal West Africa, the state of democracy across ECOWAS member countries, and African citizens’ perceptions of global power competition. She has also interned at the China Uruguay Chamber of Commerce and the China-Global South Project. At Georgetown, she is eager to broaden her expertise beyond China-Africa relations to include China’s engagement with Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Concentration: International Political Economy
Hometown: Shanghai, China
Academic Background: Bsc in Politics and International Relations, London School of Economics