Professor Wang Ke is Professor Emeritus at Kobe University in Japan. He was admitted to Minzu University of China in 1978, and after graduation pursued graduate studies there, earning a Master of Laws (Ethnology). In 1989, he entered the University of Tokyo, where he obtained a Master of Arts in 1991 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1994. He then served as a part-time lecturer in World History at the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. From 1996 until his retirement in 2021, he was Associate Professor and later Professor at the Faculty of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University, during which time he also served as Director of the China Office of Kobe University and Deputy Director of the Center for Asian Studies.

Professor Wang’s research covers a wide range of topics, including the state ideology of successive Chinese dynasties, the structural characteristics and transformations of historical Chinese political systems, the influence of modern Japan on modern Chinese state thought, the nature of ethnic issues and ethnic policies in modern China, the history of Islam and Islamic societies in China, as well as overseas Chinese communities and exiled societies.

Professor Wang has published extensively in Japanese, Chinese, English, and Korean. From "Tianxia" State (天下国家) to the Nation-State (民族国家): The Cognition and Practice of Historical China (《从“天下”国家到民族国家:历史中国的认知与实践, Shanghai People's Publishing House( 2020), Teacher, Friend, or Enemy? Nationalism and Modern Sino-Japanese Relations, The Chinese University Press( 2019), The East Turkestan Independence Movement 1930-1940, The Chinese University Press (2018), The Disappearing "Nation" (国民): The Discourse of "Minzu" (民族) and National Identity of Minorities in Modern China (『消失的「國民」—近代中國的「民族」話語与少數民族國家認同』), The Chinese University Press (2016), The Revolving Sino-Japanese Relations: The Yoke of the Nation-State (日中関係の旋回―民族国家の軛』), Toukyo: Fujiwara Shoten (2015), Ethnicity and Nation (민족과국가), Seoul: Northeast Asia History Foundation (2007),  Nation Building and "Ethnicity": State Construction and "Ethnicity" in 20th Century China（『二〇世紀中国の国家建設と「民族」』), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press (2006), The Study of the East Turkestan Republic: China’s Islam and Ethnic Issues (『東トルキスタン共和国研究―-中国のイスラームと民族問題』), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press (1995, Winner of the 18th Suntory Prize for Sciences and Humanities).

Professor Fang is an applied microeconomist with broad theoretical and empirical interests focusing on public economics. His research integrates rigorous modeling with careful data analysis and has focused on the economic analysis of discrimination; insurance markets, particularly life insurance and health insurance; and health care, including Medicare. In his research on discrimination, Professor Fang has designed and implemented tests to examine the role of prejudice in racial disparities in matters involving search rates during highway stops, treatments received in emergency departments, and racial differences in parole releases. In 2008, Professor Fang was awarded the 17th Kenneth Arrow Prize by the International Health Economics Association (iHEA) for his research on the sources of advantageous selection in the Medigap insurance market.

Professor Fang is currently working on issues related to insurance markets, particularly the interaction between the health insurance reform and the labor market. He has served as co-editor for the Journal of Public Economics and International Economic Review, and associate editor in numerous journals, including the American Economic Review.

Professor Fang received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. Before joining the Penn faculty, he held positions at Yale University and Duke University.  He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he served as the acting director of the Chinese economy working group from 2014 to 2016. He is also a research associate of the Population Studies Center and Population Aging Research Center, and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.