Chen joined the Department of European and International Studies in February 2025. He is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (LISS DTP). Before this, he worked at several institutions, including the European University Institute and the United Nations Development Programme.

He holds an MA in European Affairs (with Distinction, 2023) from KCL, a Master's Degree in Chinese Politics (2024), and a Bachelor's Degree in History (2021) from Renmin University of China.

For more information, see https://zengchen.org and his Google Scholar profile.

Research interests

• Political behaviour
• Political methodology
• British politics
• European politics

Doctoral research

Chen's PhD project assesses the political consequences of regional inequalities in the UK.

Doctoral supervisors

Prof Sofia Vasilopoulou and Dr Tuğba Bozçağa.

Latest publications

Di Leo, Riccardo, Chen Zeng, Elias Dinas, and Reda Tamtam. "Mapping (A)Ideology: A Taxonomy of European Parties Using Generative LLMs as Zero-Shot Learners." Forthcoming in Political Analysis. SSRN preprint.