Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Singapore Management University. I received my Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Virginia in August 2018. I was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s International Security Center, a Minerva-United State Institute of Peace (USIP) Peace Scholar, a predoctoral fellow at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies of the George Washington University, and an editor/analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
I study interstate conflicts, with a focus on public opinion, authoritarian politics, and international relations in East Asia. My work has appeared or is upcoming in Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, and Journal of Contemporary China.
My book, titled “The Dog That Barks: China’s Management of Mass Opinion during Interstate Disputes,” investigates China’s media statecraft throughout its foreign conflicts. By examining the motivations and approaches when authoritarian states allow, promote, or even stage-manage media coverage of a foreign dispute, the book develops a theory that explains authoritarian media campaigns during interstate disputes, delineates distinct functions of these campaigns, and describes ways to detect the authoritarian state’s foreign policy intention by analyzing its media techniques.
My research draws on extensive archival work and interviews in China and Vietnam, computerized text analysis of Chinese official media, and survey experiments in China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the US. My writing has also appeared in a variety of general publications, including The Diplomat, South China Morning Post, and The Independent. I have a joint M.A. in International Relations and Comparative Politics from George Washington University and National University of Singapore, and a B.A. in Law from Peking University.
Click here to see my CV. (Updated August 2022)