Hongyan Gu is a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellow at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS). She holds a Ph.D. in government and international relations from the University of Sydney. Hongyan’s research interests lie in the intersection of environmental history, politics and sociology of knowledge. Her current research project explores the role of forest-related traditional knowledge in biodiversity conservation in southwest China.