Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer who first came to Beijing as a student in 1984. Over the next 30 years he spent at least half his time in China, including a period working as a correspondent for Baltimore’s The Sun and later with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered macro economics, China’s WTO accession and social issues. Currently he writes features and essays for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and other publications, and also teaches undergraduates at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies, where he also runs a fellowship program. He also advises a variety of academic journals and think tanks on China.

He was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won in 2001 for his coverage of China. Johnson has published three books, and his newest is The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, which describes China’s religious revival and the country’s search for values.