I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science in the Department of Government at Harvard University as well as an A.M. candidate in Statistics. Trained in both Comparative Politics and International Relations, I work at the intersection of International and Comparative Political Economy. My research focuses on the interaction between capital mobility and state enforcement in the context of globalization. In my dissertation and related projects, I examine how governments enforce laws and regulations on mobile investors (particularly in the areas of labor rights and environmental protection), how they tax and extract from mobile capital through instruments such as tax treaties and capital controls, and how nationality and nationalism shape these dynamics.
While my research is global in nature, I have regional expertise in China and Japan and have also conducted fieldwork in Indonesia and Vietnam to study foreign firms operating there.
“Product Display Room” and “General Director Office” of a Chinese Manufacturer in Binh Duong, Vietnam (July 2024)
At Harvard, I am a resident affiliate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS). My research has been supported by the IQSS, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), the WCFIA Research Cluster on Business and Government, the Harvard Center for International Development, and the Harvard University Asia Center. I have also served as a graduate student research peer for the WCFIA Program on US-Japan Relations.
Before coming to Harvard, I spent three years at Stanford, studying comparative politics and East Asia as a master’s student in East Asian Studies and then working as a data analyst at the Center on Food Security and the Environment. Born and raised in Shandong, China, I studied Japanese and International Relations at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, during which I also spent time at universities in Tokyo, Seoul, and Singapore.