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About me

Yuzhuo Cai is a Senior Lecturer and Adjunct Professor at the Higher Education Group (HEG) within the Faculty of Management and Business at Tampere University, Finland. He has worked at HEG for two decades, including serving as the Acting Professor of the unit from 2013 to 2014. Additionally, he is the Deputy Director at the Research Centre on Transnationalism and Transformation (TRANSIT), which spans three faculties at Tampere University, and the co-director of the Sino-Finnish Education Research Centre at the Sino-Finnish Joint Learning Innovation Institute, involving more than 20 Chinese and Finnish universities. He is the co-director of the Global Research Institute for Finnish Education at the Education University of Hong Kong, with core partners from seven Finnish universities. He is also a member of the Think Tank for China Coordination Group under the SGroup university network in Europe. 

His roles in internal academic communities extend to student tutoring at the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy, and advisory board membership for the Master of Arts in International Higher Education and Management at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is a visiting professor at Beijing Normal University, Tongji University and Yunnan Normal University as well as a doctoral student supervisor at Peking University.

His pivotal role in research communities is also demonstrated through his positions as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Triple Helix (JIF: 2.6), Co-Editor of the Journal of Studies in International Education (JIF: 2.4), and Associate Editor of the Journal of the Knowledge Economy (JIF: 3.3). Additionally, he has edited six special issues and five books. He is currently editing a book titled Organisational and Management Theories in Higher Education: Understanding the Changing Landscape for Edward Elgar Publisher and a special issue, Rethinking EU-China Higher Education Cooperation in a Dynamic Global Environment, for the Journal of Studies in International Education.

He teaches qualitative research methods, organisational theories in higher education and innovation, research in public management and organisation as well as the Triple Helix model and entrepreneurial university in two Master’s programmes and one doctoral programme at Tampere University. With 15 years of experience in intensive teaching at various degree levels, he has supervised five PhD students to completion, is currently supervising six more, and has guided 26 Master’s students, with three more under his supervision.

His research centres on higher education and innovation studies, with a particular emphasis on the interplay between higher education and society, embracing an international perspective. Recognised as one of the most productive researchers and the recipient of the most cited paper award in 2022 at his faculty at Tampere University, he has a portfolio of more than 150 academic publications, accumulating over 3,400 citations (h-index=30). His work features in renowned journals like Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, Review of Higher Education, Journal of Studies in Education, Minerva, Technovation, International Journal of Management Reviews, Science and Public Policy, and Scientometrics. 

Furthermore, he has been named on the 2023 Stanford/Elsevier's Top 2% Scientist Rankings (Single Year Impact) in the field of education, maintaining his position from 2022. His involvement in education research encompasses interdisciplinary approaches integrating education, innovation, and management studies, employing diverse methodologies.

His dedication to interdisciplinary research is partially fuelled by his diverse academic background, which includes a BA in Computer Sciences, an MA in Psychology from China, an M.Phil in Comparative and International Education from the University of Oslo, and a PhD in Administrative Sciences from the University of Tampere.