I am an assistant professor of political science and the Watson Institute Assistant Professor of China Studies at Brown University. My research focuses on international security and Chinese foreign policy, with a particular interest in how bureaucracy and regimes shape international politics.
My first book, Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation (Cambridge Studies in International Relations), explores how institutions connecting leaders to their foreign policy bureaucracies affect the risk of miscalculation when states are deciding between war and peace. Bureaucracies at War won the 2025 International Studies Association Asia-Pacific Distinguished Book Award. The research has been featured in a number of outlets, including in Foreign Affairs and the Pekingology podcast. My second book project, supported by a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation, explores how threats to international and domestic regimes shape cooperation between major powers, such as the United States and China. My other research examines promotion, intelligence collection, and attitudes inside foreign policy bureaucracies in China and the United States, as well as how these bureaucracies affect foreign policy decision-making, international communication, and arming. My research has been published by or is forthcoming at the American Journal of Political Science, The China Quarterly, International Security, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Conflict of Resolution. I received a PhD in political science from Harvard University and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Belfer Center International Security Program and Harvard-Columbia China and the World Program. From 2023 to 2024, I was the David and Cindy Edelson Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Security at Dartmouth College. I am currently a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an associate in research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. In March 2023, I testified before the U.S. House of Representatives. |
Image: Tiananmen Square - 2005