I am a political scientist specialising in the intersection of technology, infrastructure, and international relations, with a particular focus on Asia and China.
I am currently working as a Junior Professor of International Relations and the Global Politics of Technology at Institute of Political Science and the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) the University of Bonn. I worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (2019–2020), as a Research Fellow at Renmin University, Beijing (2018–2020), as a research professor at Tongji University in Shanghai (2015–2018) and as a senior researcher at the Munich Center for Technology in Society at the Technical University of Munich (2018–2019). He worked at the University of Bonn’s Center for Global Studies as a managing assistant and senior fellow (2009–2015).
My research interests include the global politics of infrastructure and science; China’s geopolitics, energy and technology policy; global energy and climate politics; theories of International Relations. Maximilian has published seven books including China’s Energy Thirst: Myth or Reality? (2007 together with Xuewu Gu), Ordnungen im Wandel Globale und lokale Wirklichkeiten im Spiegel transdisziplinärer Analysen (2008, co-editer), two-volumes on The Global Politics of Science and Technology (2014, lead editor). He is coeditor of Art and Sovereignty in Global Politics (Palgrave, 2016), edited Rethinking the Silk-Road: Chinas Belt and Road Initiative and Emerging Eurasian Relations (Palgrave, 2018) and is coeditor of the Routledge Handbook on Global China (2024) and The Digitalization of Memory Practices in China. Contesting the Curating State (2025). Maximilian was leading the research group on „Infrastructures of China’s Modernity and Their Global Constitutive Effects” (2020-2025), funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Learning Empire 