Welcome!
I am the Deputy Chair of the East Asia and Pacific Area Studies Program at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. A political scientist by training, my research focuses on authoritarian politics in East Asia (especially China, South Korea, North Korea, and Taiwan). I am also an associated scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China and a nonresident fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies, which is based at the University of Vienna. I received my Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government in 2019.
My first book, Corruption Control in Authoritarian Regimes: Lessons from East Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2022), is about why some autocrats are motivated to curb corruption, why their efforts succeed or fail, and what the political consequences of such efforts are. In addition, my writing has been published or is forthcoming in numerous academic and policy journals, including Perspectives on Politics, Government and Opposition, the Journal of Democracy, Politics and Society, the Journal of Contemporary China, the Journal of East Asian Studies, the Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the China Leadership Monitor, and The National Interest.
Before entering academia, I lived and traveled in East Asia for several years, learning Chinese and Korean along the way. I worked for The Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong, taught English in Xinjiang, and studied Korean in Seoul. I received my B.A. (summa cum laude), also from Harvard, in Social Studies and East Asian Studies.