He Zhaotian, researcher at the Institution of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, member of the Beijing Contemporary Chinese History Reading Group,  adjunct researcher at the Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thoughts (ICAST), China Academy of Art, and invited researcher at The Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China at Southwest University. He is also the editor-in-chief of Renjian Thought Review (simplified Chinese version) and has been a visiting professor at Tunghai University (2007), Tsinghua University (2008), National Cheng Kung University (2009), The University of Tokyo  (2013), and National Chiao Tung University (2018). His main fields of research are Chinese political history, intellectual history, and Modern and Contemporary Chinese literature since the mid-18th century. He is the author of essay collections ‘The Knowledge and Concept of Contemporary China’ Shanghai, Taipei, 2006), ‘When China Begins to Enter the World’ (Tokyo, 2013), ‘When Socialism Encounters Crisis’ (Taipei, 2016), ‘Contemporary Chinese Ideological Unconsciousness’ (Seoul, 2018), ‘Revolution—Post-Revolution’ (Hsinchu, 2020); he co-authored  the essay collections ‘Restarting Humanistic Knowledge and Thought’  (Taipei, 2018), ‘Is It Necessary to Restart Humanistic Knowledge and Thought? How Is It Possible?’ (Taipei, 2019), ‘Is Idealistic Reconstruction Necessary? How Is It Possible?’ (Taipei, 2022), ‘Restarting Humanities Knowledge and Thought: Taking Root and Looking Away’ (Taipei, 2022); his edited collections of essays includes ‘The Twists and Turns of Western Modernity’, ‘The Twists and Turns of East Asian Modernity’ ‘Problems of Modernity in Post-Developing Developed Countries’, ‘1949 As A Human Event’ , ‘New Democracy as a Human Event’ ‘New People, Land and State’ ‘New and Old Principles, Current Situations and Trends’ ‘Socialist Transformation as a Human Event’, ‘The Fifties as Method’, ‘The Fifties as Ideological Resource.’

He Zhaotian organized the Beijing Contemporary History Reading Group, which has played an important role in cultivating ICAST’s intellectual and conceptual methods. In 2013, He Zhaotian, Gao Shiming and Sun Ge, co-led the Beijing Reading Group and advised young ICAST scholars on their research of the Ten Mile Inn. In 2014, at the invitation of ICAST, he gave a series of lectures including “The Key Lies in the Sunshine: Revolution, Post-Revolution, Enlightenment, Post-Enlightenment, and Contemporary Avant-Garde Art in Mainland China” and “When China Begins to Integrate with the World…” In 2017, he offered the ICAST course “Cultural Unconsciousness in Contemporary China: Examples from Yu Hua, Fang Lizhi, and Jia Zhangke.” In 2023, he gave a lecture entitled “Dialectics of the Theory of The Four Occupations and The Theory of Class” at ICAST.