Dr Stephan Ortmann

Dr Stephan Ortmann received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2008. His research has focused on comparative politics, especially Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Vietnam. He has worked on the question of regime change, civil society, identity politics, and environmental governance. Currently, he is working on research dealing with environmental activism in Vietnam and Hong Kong as well as the political transformation of Hong Kong.

In 2018, while working at City University of Hong Kong, Ortmann received a GRF grant for his project “Environmental Protests and Political Change in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Vietnam” worth HKD944,552. The project focused on environmental protests in Vietnam primarily through reports in the Vietnamese press. As a Communist one-party state, the Vietnamese government controls the media and thus reports about protests are an important indicator of toleration and concern with rising environmental problems. The research built on his book Environmental Governance in Vietnam: (Palgrave Macmillan 2017).

Stephan Ortmann is an active member of the research community. He works as a region expert of Hong Kong for the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project and as a Singapore country expert for the Bertelsmann Foundation. He writes a biannual report for the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI). He has also been in local and international media commenting on Hong Kong and Singapore political issues.