social scientist of environment, climate, autocracy, democracy

Welcome! I am Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, with a courtesy appointment in Public Policy at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Starting in fall 2023, I will be Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.

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My research explores the paradoxes and pushbacks attending economic, political, and cultural modernization, such as creative resistance against institutional rigidities, lingering moral traditions against legal development, enduring historical memories against rapid socioeconomic transformations, and humans' simultaneous degradation of nature and attachment to nature.

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My book The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China has been recently released by Cornell University Press. This book is based on my doctoral dissertation, which received the Virginia M. Walsh Award for the best dissertation in the field of Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics, and the Best Dissertation Award in Urban and Local Politics from the American Political Science Association.

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My articles have appeared in World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, Studies in Comparative International Development, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and China Quarterly. 

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I received my Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, and my B.A. in Political Science and Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Michigan.