Mark R. Thompson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mark R. Thompson (born June 8, 1960) is an academic whose comparative politics research focuses on Southeast Asia, with particular interest in the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. He is currently studying autocratization and opposition to it, presidentialism, and dynastic leadership. He is chair professor of politics in the Department of Public and International Affairs at the City University of Hong Kong, where he is also director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC).[1]
He was president of the Hong Kong Political Science Association from 2018 to 2020 and of the Asian Political and International Studies Association from 2013 to 2014. He was a research fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) at Kyoto University in the winter of 2024, as well as Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow for Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore in 2008 and Stanford University in 2009. The co-editor of the Routledge/City University of Hong Kong Southeast Asia Series, he has received several major external grants worth over one million USD. As the author and editor of 11 books and over 200 articles and book chapters, his research has been featured in the popular media (e.g. Time Magazine, The Washington Post, CNBC, and Wired Magazine). He lends his expertise to government, public foundations, and non-government organizations in the areas of East Asian (Northeast and Southeast Asia) politics and development and has been a regular commentator on leading academic blogs as well as in the local and international press.
He completed his B.A. in religious studies from Brown University in 1982. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. (1991 with honors) in political science at Yale University where he was mentored by Juan J. Linz and James C. Scott. Earlier, he had received a Dorot Foundation fellowship to attend a summer programme at Hebrew University (1980) and a Rotary Foundation scholarship to enroll in the political science MA programme at the University of the Philippines, Diliman (1984–85). In 1983, he studied German at the Goethe-Institut, Boppard, and in 1988, he studied Tagalog (Filipino) with a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Academic career
He previously held permanent positions as a lecturer at the University of Münster, the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, the TU Dresden, and the University of Glasgow, where he was promoted to senior lecturer, and was a full professor at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg where he also served as associate dean as well as director of the North America Studies Center. He has also held several visiting positions: as acting chair professor and a director of the Southeast Asia program at the University of Passau, Germany, and as a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley as well as a visiting professor at Keio University, Japan, the University for Peace, Costa Rica, De La Salle University, the Philippines, and Thammasat University, Thailand. He became Professor of Politics at the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong in 2010 and was head of that department from 2015 to 2022. In 2023, he was promoted to chair professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs.
