PhD student Lexin (Mona) Lin has been granted “the 2017 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad” by China Scholarship Council.

This award was started in 2003 by the Chinese government with the purpose of recognizing academic excellence achieved by overseas Chinese PhD students not financed through the China Scholarship Council. Each year, across all academic disciplines, only a limited number of overseas PhD candidates with outstanding performance in their PhD studies will be considered and awarded on a global scale. Student winners are selected through a rigorous process of evaluation, involving a minimum of three rounds of judging conducted by experts from the student’s relevant field of study, both in the host country and in China. This award is considered as the highest award given by the Chinese government to graduate students living abroad who do not receive financial support from the Chinese government.

To date, the recipients include students from 33 countries. For the academic year 2017, among over 8,000 Chinese students studying in Sweden, fourteen PhD students were granted the “Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad”. Mona has been awarded in recognition of her PhD research, which aims to increase the knowledge about effective risk communication in a multi-stakeholder multi-level disaster risk management system, with a specific focus on the exchange of risk-related information for conducting, disseminating and utilizing various risk assessments. Her work is based on the Swedish context, and is under the supervision of Professor Henrik Tehler and Associate Professor Marcus Abrahamsson, at the Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety, Lund University.

The award ceremony was held in the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm, on 19 April, 2018. Ambassador Gui Congyou presented the award to Mona. She is the first social scientist to receive this award in Sweden, since the award started 15 years ago. She is also the only female awardee in the academic year 2017. Division Head Associate Professor Marcus Abrahamsson, as Mona’s co-supervisor, had attended this event.