Welcome! I am Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, and Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to my academic work, I also actively contribute to foreign policy analysis and debates. For more on my policy-engaged writings, see here.
I am interested in how states use non-military tools, including economic and informational tools, in pursuit of geopolitical influence. My research interests cover the political economy of security, foreign influence operations, diasporas in international relations, China's foreign policy, and Asia-Pacific security issues. My first book examines the strategies and effectiveness of economic statecraft, with a focus on positive inducements. In another series of ongoing projects, I analyze how authoritarian states such as China are using informational tools to alter public discourse and shape political processes in democracies — what I call “informational statecraft.” My second book project examines the complicated role of “diaspora statecraft” in China’s foreign influence activities. Other work has looked at the role of subnational actors in China’s foreign policy and at asymmetrical alliance relationships, with a focus on East and Southeast Asia.
Previously, I was a Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and MIT’s Security Studies Program. I have also held affiliations at Harvard’s Fairbank Center, the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program, the Brookings Institution, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I received my PhD in Security Studies from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, where I was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. My research has also been supported by the Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Tobin Project, and the Bradley Foundation.
Gansu, China, July 2017