Martin Wagner is a historian of Eastern Europe, China, and their relations. Currently, he is a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer at Kiel University and a review editor at H-Soz-Kult. Martin holds a PhD in History from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, after having studied History and China Studies in Berlin, Beijing, and Moscow; he was also a guest researcher at Princeton University and in Hong Kong. Before joining Kiel University, he held positions as (post)doctoral research associate and lecturer at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin.

His first monograph, Collective Disciplining, is an entangled comparison of post-totalitarian transformation in the Soviet Union and China (under revision for publication) and was awared the Tiburtius Prize and the Max Weber Award. A second monograph on four hundred years of Sino-Russian relations, titled China und Russland (co-authored with Sören Urbansky), appeared with Suhrkamp Verlag and was translated into several languages (English: Entangled Empires, Polity). His articles have appeared in The American Historical Review and Historische Zeitschrift, among other publications.