About Me

Welcome! I am a newly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Boston College, starting in July 2025.

I obtained my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin in 2023, a Master’s of Public Policy from Georgetown University in 2016, and B.A. in Political Science from Macalester College in 2014. Before joining BC, I was Earl S. Johnson Lecturer of Political Science at the University of Chicago (2023-25).

My research focuses on statebuilding and political institutions in modern autocracies, with a regional emphasis on East and Inner Asia. I examine how authoritarian leaders design institutions and mechanisms to manage and control local and subordinate bureaucrats, ensuring compliance with the regime’s policy agenda. I also study the short- and long-term effects of authoritarian political institutions on regime stability, socioeconomic outcomes, and citizens’ political attitudes.

My book manuscript, titled Statebuilding by Campaign: The Making of Modern Chinese Bureaucracy, 1949-76, studies the various mechanisms employed by the Chinese regime under Mao Zedong to motivate and control subordinate bureaucrats during the first three decades of the People’s Republic. Additionally, my works on East Asian politics have been published in Comparative Politics, The China Quarterly, Ethnopolitics, and The Routledge Handbook in Anti-Corruption Research and Practice.

For more information on my research work, please find my CV here.