Dragana Mitrović

Prof. Dr. Dragana Mitrović is a prominent Serbian scholar specialising in China, East Asia and international political economy. She is Professor of Political Economy and Finance at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Political Sciences, where her work focuses on China’s economic transformation, foreign policy, East Asian security, geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Mitrović has played a pioneering role in establishing Asian studies as an academic field in Serbia. She founded the Centre for Asian and Far Eastern Studies at the University of Belgrade, launched its master’s programme in Regional Asian Studies, and later established the Belgrade-based Institute for Asian Studies, which she currently leads.

Alongside her academic career, she served as a political and economic affairs adviser at Yugoslavia’s and later Serbia and Montenegro’s embassy in Beijing between 2001 and 2004. She has conducted research at institutions including the universities of Oxford, Nottingham, Doshisha and Waseda. The author of six books and more than sixty academic articles, she is particularly recognised for her work on China’s global rise, the Belt and Road Initiative, China–Balkans relations and Asia-Pacific security.