Faculty Speakers
James Bisbee is a postdoctoral fellow at NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics where he researches how online information environments influence political beliefs. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton's Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance.
Yu Hao is an Associate Professor of Economics at Peking University. His research interests are economic history, development economics, and political economy. He received his Ph.D. in economics from UC Davis and his B.A. in economics at Peking University.
Ji Yeon (Jean) Hong (Ph.D., New York University, 2014) is an Associate Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her research interest centers on the political economy of authoritarian regimes. She focuses on political economic incentives and constraints that shape authoritarian rulers’ policy choices. Her studies range over various topics in the political economy including authoritarian elections, economic development, industrial policy, social policy, conflicts and violence, and colonial legacies. Her recent works have been published or are forthcoming in British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Science Research and Methods and Economic History Review, among others.
Yue Hou is the Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences in the department of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her substantive research interests include authoritarian institutions, business-state relations, the political economy of development, and ethnic politics, with a regional focus on China. Her book The Private Sector in Public Office: Selective Property Rights in China (October 2019, Cambridge University Press) examines strategies Chinese private entrepreneurs use to protect property from expropriation. In 2015–16, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Penn's Center for the Study of Contemporary China. She received her PhD in Political Science from MIT and her BA in Economics and Mathematics from Grinnell College.
Haifeng Huang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Merced. His current research focuses on topics of information flow and opinion formation in authoritarian settings, especially China, including international information exposure, propaganda, rumor and fake news, and media freedom. He has also studied issues related to electoral competition, political trust, reform, and social transition. Methodologically he uses surveys, experiments, and formal modeling.
Eddy Malesky is a Professor of Political Economy in the Political Science Department at Duke University and a noted specialist in economic development, authoritarian institutions, and comparative political economy in Vietnam. Currently, Malesky's research agenda is very much at the intersection of Comparative and International Political Economy, falling into three major categories: 1) Authoritarian political institutions and their consequences; 2) The political influence of foreign direct investment and multinational corporations; and 3) Political institutions, private business development, and formalization.
Melanie Manion is Vor Broker Family Professor of Political Science at Duke University. She studied philosophy and political economy at Peking University in the late 1970s, was trained in Far Eastern studies at McGill University and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and earned her doctorate in political science at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on contemporary authoritarianism, with empirical work on bureaucracy, corruption, information, and representation in China. She is the recipient of numerous research awards, including awards from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and American Council of Learned Societies. Her newest research investigates the political selection of “winners” in China’s ongoing anticorruption campaign. Recent research, in collaboration with Charles Chang, analyzes social media self-censorship in China. Her most recent book, Information for Autocrats (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines representation in Chinese local congresses. Previous publications include Retirement of Revolutionaries in China (Princeton University Press, 1993), Corruption by Design (Harvard University Press, 2004), and Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies (edited with Allen Carlson, Mary Gallagher, and Kenneth Lieberthal, Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her articles have appeared in journals including American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, and China Quarterly. She is an award-winning teacher.
Daniel Mattingly is Assistant Professor of Political Science. He studies the political economy of development and authoritarian politics with a focus on China. His book, The Art of Political Control in China (Cambridge University Press) examines how China’s authoritarian state controls protest and implements ambitious policies from sweeping urbanization schemes to family planning initiatives. His current work examines the role of the military, nationalism, and surveillance technology in Chinese politics. He received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Yale University.
Meng Miao
Meng Miao is an assistant professor in Hanqing advance institute of economics and finance, Renmin University, China. Meng holds a Degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, China, a MSc and a Dphil degree in financial economics from the University of Oxford. His research interest lies in corporate finance, institutional economics, China history and Contemporary China-related issues.
Jennifer Pan is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Stanford University. Her research focuses on political communication and authoritarian politics. Pan uses experimental and computational methods with large-scale datasets on political activity in China and other authoritarian regimes to answer questions about how autocrats perpetuate their rule. How political censorship, propaganda, and information manipulation work in the digital age. How preferences and behaviors are shaped as a result.
Her book, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers (Oxford, 2020) shows how China's pursuit of political order transformed the country’s main social assistance program, Dibao, for repressive purposes. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed publications such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and Science.
She graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government.
Yilang Peng is an assistant professor in applied consumer analytics and strategic communication in the Department of Financial Planning, Housing, and Consumer Economics at the University of Georgia. He received his Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. His scholarship is at the intersection of computational social science, visual communication, and media effects. His research applies cutting-edge computer vision methods to investigate the production and effects of visual messages across different communication contexts. He is also interested in science communication, especially public perceptions of artificial intelligence technologies, such as facial recognition and self-driving cars. His works have been published (or are forthcoming) in leading venues both in communication and human-computer interaction, including the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, New Media & Society, the International Journal of Press/Politics, and the Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. He received his M.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and B.S. degree from Peking University.
Jacopo Ponticelli joined Kellogg School of Management in 2017 as an Associate Professor of Finance. He is an applied economist who primarily studies corporate finance and development economics. His research interests include law and finance, financial development, and economic growth. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. Before joining Kellogg School of Management, he served as an Assistant Professor of Finance and Cohen and Keenoy Scholar at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Professor Ponticelli holds a PhD in Economics from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain).
Peter Rosendorff is Professor of Politics at NYU. He serves as Editor of the journal Economics and Politics, and serves on the editorial board of International Organization. He holds a PhD from Columbia University in Economics, and has held grants from the National Science Foundation among others. Consulting clients have included The World Bank, US Department of State, Major League Soccer, FIFA, and AT&T. Professor Rosendorff's research examines the linkages between domestic politics and international economic policy, and has published widely in the Economics, Political Science and International Relations journals. Recent work examines the links between the institutional features of democracy (such as electoral accountability, separation of powers, transparency) and economic policy (trade policy and membership of international trade regulating organizations). He is also working on the links between domestic politics and the optimal design of international institutions like the World Trade Organization and its dispute resolution mechanism.
Arturas Rozenas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at New York University. He holds a PhD in Political Science (Duke, 2012) and MS in Statistical and Decision Sciences (Duke, 2010). In 2016-2017, He was a National Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford. His research focuses on building theoretical models of authoritarian politics and testing them using natural experiments, field experiments, and machine learning tools. He is especially interested in information manipulation through media, propaganda, and elections, as well as causes and consequences of state repression. His empirical work mostly covers Ukraine and Russia, and post-communist Europe more generally. At NYU, He teaches courses on comparative politics and advanced statistical methods.
Victor C. Shih is Ho Miu Lam Chair Associate Professor in China and Pacific Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego specializing in China. He is the author of a book published by the Cambridge University Press entitled Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation and of a forthcoming book Coalitions of the Weak: Late Mao Power Strategies and the Dawn of the Xi Jinping Era. He is also editor of Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability: Duration, Institutions and Financial Conditions, published by the University of Michigan Press. This book uses comparative cases to explore how authoritarian regimes respond to economic crises. He is further the author of numerous articles appearing in academic and business journals, including The American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and The Wall Street Journal. Shih served as principal in The Carlyle Group’s global market strategy group and continues to advise the financial community on China-related issues. He is currently working on several papers using quantitative data to analyze the Chinese political elite.
Tara Slough is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at New York University. She writes on the political economy of institutions and development. Her current research focuses on the comparative study of bureaucracies and on research design. She has conducted fieldwork in Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, Malawi, Nigeria, Peru, and Venezuela. Her research has been supported by grants from the NSF, USAID, EGAP/DFID, J-PAL, the Columbia Institute for Latin American Studies (ILAS), the Center for the Study of Development Strategies (CSDS), and the Columbia Department of Political Science.
Rory Truex is an Assistant Professor in Princeton's Department of Politics and Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. His research focuses on Chinese politics and theories of authoritarian rule. His book Making Autocracy Work: Representation and Responsiveness in Modern China investigates the nature of representation in authoritarian systems, specifically the politics surrounding China's National People's Congress (NPC). He argues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engineering a system of “representation within bounds” in the NPC, fostering information revelation but silencing political activism. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, China Quarterly, among other journals, and his commentary has been featured in The Atlantic. He graduated from Princeton in 2007 and currently resides in Philadelphia.
Yuhua Wang is the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University. His research focuses on the politics of state building, with a regional focus on China. He is the author of Tying the Autocrat’s Hands: The Rise of the Rule of Law in China (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is currently working on a new book "Social Origins of Durable Rule in Imperial China" (under contract at Princeton University Press) to examine the long-term state development in China. He received B.A. from Peking University and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Melanie Meng Xue a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Economics (September 2020- ) in the Social Science Division at New York University (AD), a member of the economic history group. Before joining NYUAD, she spent time at UCLA and Northwestern.
She has studied the rise of women, the self-perpetuation of authoritarian regimes, and the evolution of antisocial behavior in imperial and modern China. By tracing the impact of historical events over time and in various institutional settings, her work centers on the role of values, beliefs, and norms in shaping economic and political disparities.
In a recent project, she discovered oral traditions are a powerful measure of the historical component of cultural values, connecting history and culture. This line of inquiry has produced a dataset on historical values (trust, risk-taking & gender norms) across countries/ethnic groups based on a folklore catalogue.
Xiaohong Yu is an associate professor of political science and associate director of Legal Data Research Center at Tsinghua University. Her research interests are law and politics in China, comparative judicial politics and China reforms. Her recent work focuses on big-data analysis of judicial reform as well as laws and law-making in China.
Before joining the Social Science Program at Tsinghua, Professor Yu was an An Wang Fellow at the Fairbank Center of Harvard University from 2009-2010. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 2009.
Congyi Zhou is an assistant professor in the Wilf Family Department of Politics at New York University. He received his Ph.D. from Harris School of Public Policy, the University of Chicago. His research interests are political economy, applied game theory, comparative politics, and public policy.
Boliang Zhu is Associate Professor of Political Science and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He studies international/comparative political economy and Chinese politics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Politics, Political Science Research and Methods, Governance, and Research & Politics.