Clara Baumann Earns Doctorate with Dissertation on Chinese Direct Investment in Colombia

Clara Baumann successfully defended her dissertation “‘Return of Dependency’ or ‘A New Hope’? East-South Investment and Interdependent Development in Colombia,” at the University of Duisburg-Essen at the end of June. Her research examines whether Chinese direct investment is creating new patterns of development in the Global South or reinforcing traditional dependencies. Using a case study on Colombia to compare American and Chinese multinationals, she shows that Chinese investors demonstrate greater flexibility, stronger learning curves, and – under certain circumstances – a greater willingness to adapt to both a target country’s state and labor demands. The study is based on sixty-four expert and participant interviews as well as two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Colombia. The dissertation was supervised by Karen Shire, professor of comparative sociology and Japanese society at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Clara Baumann was a doctoral researcher at the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy from 2019 to 2024. She has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Comparative Sociology and Japanese Society in the Institute for East Asian Studies (IN-EAST), University of Duisburg-Essen, since 2024.