“It is a great pleasure to be enrolled in the CAAS-WUR joint PhD programme, and I am very appreciated the support from my institute on the application”, said by Jia Ni, who works in the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development (IAED, CAAS) and just became a new PhD candidate enrolled by Wageningen University and Research in September 2020.

Jia further explained his thankfulness by mentioning that the institute (IAED) management team gave the green light for his application since the beginning. It was in early March 2020, while the pandemic drew most energy and human resources from the head of the research branch and institute, Jia still received special attention support on applying for this joint programme, in terms of supervisor liaison, research proposal design, language training, and WUR communication.

“My research topic for this PhD programme is on Agri-product e-commerce and its role in connecting smallholder farmers with big market“, Jia continued, “which is a result of mutual consultation among IAED, WUR and myself, based on my personal interest, CAAS supervisor expertise and social focus, it also got support from WUR due to the potential scale-up in other continent, such as Southeast Asia and Africa”. Jia hopes that this topic can benefit not only smallholder farmers but also rural industry.

IAED has been providing support to its students and staff to apply for joint PhD programme for many years. Including Jia, there are 4 PhD candidates being enrolled in CAAS-WUR and CAAS-ULg (University of Leige).