I am an An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT. I study the political economy of authoritarian rule, with a regional focus on China. My research has been published in Political Science Research and Methods and received a revise-and-resubmit at Journal of Politics.
My dissertation examines how autocracies maintain political control as their private sectors expand. Focusing on the everyday setting of private workplaces, I study how the Chinese party-state embeds Communist Party cells within private firms and how these institutions affect business operations and employee behavior. Methodologically, I combine quantitative methods with qualitative interviews and fieldwork, drawing on firm-level panel data, text analysis, employee surveys, and survey experiments.
My research has received recognition across political science and management, including the Best Paper Award from APSA’s Democracy and Autocracy Section, the Dorothy Day Award for Outstanding Labor Research from APSA’s Labor Politics Related Group, and a Best Paper Designation from the Academy of Management. It has also been supported by the APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG), the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.
I hold an MA in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS) from Columbia University, an MSS in Government and Politics from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a Bachelor of Social Science Education from The Education University of Hong Kong.
Before starting my Ph.D., I worked in media and advocacy, including serving as a ChinaFile Research Fellow at Asia Society in New York and a research journalist at Initium Media in Hong Kong. I also coordinated a media project with Oxfam Hong Kong, where I traveled across China to interview migrant workers and NGOs, documenting their struggles to advocate for their rights.
More about my research can be found here, and my CV is here. You can reach out to me via email at yezhang[at]fas.harvard.edu.