BA(Honours) (Adelaide); PhD (Adelaide).

Born in Murray Bridge and raised in South Australia's South East, notably Millicent, Gerrry graduated from Millicent Highschool and later went on to do a BA at the University of Adelaide as a mature age student having been a labourer, tree faller, and would-be park ranger.

At the University of Adelaide, Gerry fell into the study of Chinese to complement his interests in history and politics. Under the wonderful teaching of Prof Andrew Watson, Sylvia Chan, Hsu Chiacheng,and Prof Trevor Wilson among others, he was inspired to go on to do Honours and wrote his thesis on the Chinese historiography of united front work.

Gerry subsequently spent several years at Shanghai's East China Normal University (華東師範大學） as a language student before returning to Adelaide to commence a PhD on united front work and China's minor parties and groups.

While in China, Gerry experienced the sweet & sour of the liuxuesheng life. Among the highlights were appearances in Chinese movies and TV series, most notably Shanghai Yi Jia Ren (A Shanghai Family 上海一傢人) in which he acted atrociously but had a key role, and Xiao Dao Ji (The Small Knives Society小刀會) in which he acted as the only Western good guy.

Perhap more importantly, he also appeared as an extra in Jackie Chan's Drunken Master II. He is in two scenes so look out for him!

A revised version of Gerry's PhD thesis appeared in 2004 as the book, Managing Transitions: The Chinese Communist Party, united front work, corporatism and Hegemony (Routledge) which was launched by the then opposition spokesman on foreign affairs, Kevin Rudd.

Since 2004 Gerry has published on a variety of issues including crisis management in China, soft power, contemporary united front work, and South Australia-China relations.

Gerry has wide-ranging interests and teaches on Asian studies, the impact of Asian influences on shaping Western societies, to Chinese politics, religion and culture.

Other interests include the diffusion of Chinese and Asian food styles and Western attempts to encapsulate oriental themes in music. However, he neither cooks the recipes in his Chinese cookbook collection, nor plays any of the kitsh tunes in his Orientalia music collection.

Managing Transitions examines the history and roles of China's minor parties and groups (MPG's) in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) united front between the 1930's and 1990's using Antonio Gramsci's principles for the winning and maintaining of hegemony. Gramsci advocated a "war of position," the building of political alliances to isolate existing state powers and win consent for revolutionary rule and transform society. Economic reform is now creating new socio-economic groups and the CCP is adjusting the united front and the MPGs to co-opt their representatives and deliberately forestall the evolution of an autonomous civil society and middle class which could challenge CCP rule. This has resulted in a new and expanding role for the united front, the MPGs and organisations representing the new interest groups.