Ruohan Qin
Biography
Ruohan first arrived at Murray Edwards in 2019 as a tourist, returned in 2022 to teach and conduct admissions interviews, and by 2025 found himself officially on the other side of the table as Lecturer, Fellow, and Director of Studies in Economics — marking the formal beginning of his academic career. Along the way, he has also collected a few other Cambridge titles: Bye-Fellow at Downing, Senior Teaching Member at Robinson, and Teaching Associate at Selwyn.
He teaches a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including Microeconomics, Labour, Industry, Trade & Development, and has also supervised dissertations. In addition, Ruohan regularly appears as an Economic Commentator on China Global Television Network (CGTN), offering expert insights on contemporary economic and social issues. He genuinely enjoys discussing economics and sharing ideas, and warmly welcomes any opportunities to do so.
Prior to his academic career, Ruohan tried life as a finance bro in Shanghai and Shenzhen at big name firms. Soon he discovered that the jungle of high finance wasn’t quite his thing, and happily traded suits and Excel sheets for gowns and blackboards. From the money game to the mind game — the deal of his life.
Degrees
PhD in Economics, University of Cambridge
MSc in Economics (Distinction), London School of Economics and Political Science
BSc (Hons) in Economics (First Class), University of Nottingham
Awards
Wrenbury Scholarship in Political Economy
Research Fields: Networks, Game Theory, Economics of Conflict
Ruohan is a microeconomic theorist straying beyond the traditional world of supply and demand into the darker side of economics — what happens when there are no property rights and people can not only produce but also raid? In such a state of nature, agents face a choice not just between working hard or hardly working, but between producing, stealing, and going to war. His work brings modern network theory to bear on classical questions of conflict and state formation. At heart, the question is: who farms, who raids, who rules?