Professor Elizabeth J Perry

Elizabeth J. Perry is Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. She is a comparativist with special expertise in the politics of China. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, she sits on the editorial boards of nearly a dozen major scholarly journals and has served as the President of the Association for Asian Studies. Professor Perry's research focuses on popular protest and grassroots politics in modern and contemporary China. Her books include Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945 (1980); Chinese Perspectives on the Nien Rebellion (1981); The Political Economy of Reform in Post-Mao China (1985); Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (1992); Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Chinese Cities (1995); Putting Class in Its Place: Worker Identities in East Asia (1996); Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution (1997); Danwei: The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective (1997); Chinese Society: Change, Conflict, and Resistance (2000); Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China (2002); Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern China (2002); Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship and the Modern Chinese State (2006); Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China (2007); and Mao's Invisble Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China (2011). Her book, Shanghai on Strike: the Politics of Chinese Labor (1993) won the John King Fairbank prize from the American Historical Association.

Ekiert is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government, Director of CES, and Senior Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. His teaching and research interests focus on comparative politics, regime change and democratization, civil society and social movements, and East European politics and societies. He is the author of The State Against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe (1996); Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland (with J. Kubik, 1999); Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (co-edited with S. Hanson, 2003); editor of special issues of East European Politics and Societies on the “EU Eastward Enlargement” (with J. Zielonka, 2003) and of “Democracy in the Postcommunist World” (2007) and Taiwan Journal of Democracy on “A Liberal Challenge? Civil Society and Grass-root Politics in New Democracies” (with S. Kim, 2013). He is also co-editor of Open Forum — the interactive CES working papers series. His current projects explore civil society development in new democracies in Central Europe and East Asia and patterns of transformations in post-communist world.

Yan Xiaojun is an Associate Professor of Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. He obtained his Bachelor of Law (International Politics) and Master of Law (International Politics) degrees from Peking University and an A.M. and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He is a comparative political scientist with special expertise in the politics of China. His research interests evolve around political development, authoritarianism, democratization, local government, contentious politics, comparative historical study of revolution, and the Chinese reforms. Dr. Yan was awarded the 2012 Gordon White Prize by the China Quarterly for his article entitled “ ‘To Get Rich Is Not Only Glorious’: Economic Reform and the New Entrepreneurial Party Secretaries” (The China Quarterly, June 2012, No. 210). His first book on Hong Kong politics was selected as one of the “Ten Best Chinese Books (non-fiction) Published in 2015” by Asia Weekly (亞洲週刊). A recipient of a Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (2007), he served as a member of HKU’s Common Core Curriculum Committee and an Area of Inquiry (AoI) Leader from 2013 to 2015. He is a recipient of HKU’s Outstanding Teaching Award (2013). Dr. Yan is an Associate Member of the Central Policy Unit of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies in January 2016.

Professor Jan Kubik is Director of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Professor of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL SSEES, and Pro-Vice Provost for Europe at UCL. He works on the interplay between power (politics) and culture, protest politics and social movements, and post-communist transformations. He also writes about qualitative methods in the social sciences. His first and one of the most recent books, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power (Penn State Press) and Anthropology and Political Science (Berghahn, with Myron Aronoff) are the best exemplifications of his approach. In another recent project, co-organized with Amy Linch and sponsored by the Social Science Research Council in New York, a team of top experts took a critical look at the field of post-communist studies: Postcommunism from Within: Social Justice, Mobilization, and Hegemony (NYU Press). Kubik studies politics and culture comparatively, but the principal source of his observations and data are Poland and East Central Europe.

Mark R. Beissinger is the Henry W. Putnam Professor of Politics at Princeton and Director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).  In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, Beissinger is author or editor of five books, including most recently Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2014). His book Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge University Press, 2002) received multiple awards, including the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award presented by the American Political Science Association for the best book published in the United States in the field of government, politics, or international affairs.  Recent writings have dealt with such topics as individual participation in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and in the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions in 2011, the impact of new social media on opposition movements in autocratic regimes, Russian imperialism in Eurasia, how to think about an historical legacy, the relationship between nationalism and democracy, and the evolving character of revolutions over the last century.  Beissinger received his B.A. from Duke University in 1976 and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1982.  

Dominika Kruszewska is a PhD Candidate in the Government Department at Harvard University and a Graduate Student Associate of the Center for European Studies, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the Davis Center. Her general research interests include protest organization and tactical choices; political violence and public opinion; and the state-protest movement nexus. She is particularly interested in the relationships between social movements, the public, and the institutions and agents of the state. Her research so far has explored for example, whether adoption of extreme tactics by protesters increases public support for government negotiations with the movement; whether government repression of protesters increases support for the movement; and whether voters reward political candidates for activism and involvement in contentious politics. Some of this work has been published in Comparative Political Studies and Perspectives on Europe. Her dissertation examines the conditions under which political parties with roots in social movements are able to take advantage of the opportunities created by their origins. 

William Hurst is Associate Professor of Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. William Hurst works on labor politics, contentious politics, political economy, and the politics of law and legal institutions, principally in China and Indonesia.  He is currently completing a book manuscript on the comparative politics of law and legal institutions in China and Indonesia since 1949.  For this work he has completed more than one year of fieldwork in each country since 2006.

Graeme Robertson is a Professor of Political Science at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his B.A. from Oxford University (1990), an M.A. in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies from Harvard University (1997), and his Ph.D from Columbia University (2004). A specialist in comparative politics, Graeme’s work focuses on political protest and the dynamics of competition between rulers and their challengers in contemporary authoritarian political systems. His recent publications include work on political institutions in authoritarian regimes, analysis of the structural and political factors that shape regime dynamics and studies of the individual-level determinants of support for and opposition to authoritarian regimes. He has published articles in many academic journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics and the British Journal of Political Science. His most recent book, The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia, was published by Cambridge University Press in January 2011.

Graeme is currently working on a number of projects including a study of the Russian opposition in the aftermath of the 2011-12 election protests and an analysis of the effects of revolution and war in Ukraine.

Sam Greene is Director of the Russia Institute at King`s College London and senior lecturer in Russian politics. Prior to moving to London in 2012, he lived and worked in Moscow for 13 years, most recently as director of the Centre for the Study of New Media & Society at the New Economic School, and as deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. His book,Moscow in Movement: Power & Opposition in Putin`s Russia, was published in August 2014 by Stanford University Press. He holds a PhD in political sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Eliza W. Y. Lee is a Professor of Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. She obtained her BSSc from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and her PhD from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She is the director of the Centre for Civil Society and Governance and the coordinator of the Master of Global Public Policy Programme. Her current research interests are the politics of social policy development, civil society organizations, civic engagement, and collaborative governance, with particular focus on Hong Kong and its comparison with selected Asian states. Her articles have appeared in Governance, Policy and Politics, Journal of Social Policy, Voluntas, Public Administration Review, Asian Survey, and International Review of Administrative Sciences. She is a member of the editorial board of Public Administration Review, Voluntas, and International Review of Administrative Sciences, and is an associate editor of the Asian-Pacific Journal of Public Administration. Her latest research projects include:  capacity assessment of civil society sectors in Hong Kong; social movement dynamics in a hybrid regime; and the latest trend of civic engagement in Hong Kong.  She served as Head of the Department from July 2013 to June 2016.

Dr. Cheris Shun-Ching Chan

Cheris Shun-ching Chan is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD from Northwestern University and a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA’s International Institute. Her research interests include culture, economic practices, healthcare, globalization, new social movements, and Chinese societies. Her writings have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Social Psychology Quarterly, China Quarterly, and International Sociology. She is the author of the award-winning book, Marketing Death: Culture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China (Oxford University Press, 2012). Chan is currently working on two projects, the doctor-patient relationship in China and the lasting struggle of the Falun Gong.

Richard W.X. Hu is Professor and Head of Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. Richard Hu was educated at Peking University in China (B.A. in International politics), the Johns Hopkins University SAIS (M.A. in International Relations), and University of Maryland, College Park (Ph.D. in Political Science) in the U.S.A.  He was a John M. Olin Fellow at Harvard University and an IGCC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Diego. He taught five years in the U.S.A. before joining the HKU staff in 1997. He also held visiting positions at the University of Georgia, Brookings Institution, and Uppsala University. His teaching and research interests focus on international political economy, East Asian international relations and regionalism, China's foreign relations, and cross-Strait relations. Currently, he is working on research projects concerning Sino-US relationns, China and East Asian regionalism, and cross-Taiwan Strait relations.

Professor Suisheng Zhao

Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China and is the author or editor of nine books or monographs. His most recent books include Debating Political Reform in China: Rule of Law versus Democratization (M. E. Sharpe, 2006), A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford University Press, 2004), Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior (M. E. Sharpe, 2003), China and Democracy: Reconsidering the Prospects for a Democratic China (Routledge, 2000), Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the Crisis of 1995-96 (Routledge, 1999).

Kacie Kieko Miura is a PhD student in International Relations and Comparative Politics in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on China's foreign policy. Kacie holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from Yale University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Journalism from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Kacie previously served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Chongqing, China.

Joel S. Migdal is the Robert F. Philip Professor of International Studies in the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. Dr. Migdal was formerly associate professor of Government at Harvard University and senior lecturer at Tel-Aviv University.
Dr. Migdal is the founding chair of the University of Washington ‘s International Studies Program. In 1993, he received the University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award; in 1994, the Washington State Governor’s Writers Award; in 2006, the Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award; and, in 2008, the Provost Distinguished Lectureship.

David Cunningham is Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis.  His current research focuses on the causes, sequencing, and legacy of racial and ethnic contention, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.  His latest book, Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era's Largest KKK, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013 and served as the basis for a PBS American Experience documentary of the same name earlier this year.

Sam Handlin is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah and was previously a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.  In addition to several articles in academic journals, he is the co-editor and co-author of Reorganizing Popular Politics: Participation and the New Interest Regime in Latin America (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009) and is close to finishing another book manuscript, tentatively titled The Politics of Polarization:  State Crises, Party Systems, and Democratic Erosion in Post-Cold War South America.  His next major projects examines the roles of autocratic regional powers such as China, Russia, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia in shaping regime trends in other countries.

Danijela Dolenec is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb and President of the Board of the newly-founded Institute for Political Ecology. She teaches comparative politics, social science methods and politics of protest, while in her research particularly particularly focuses on postsocialist political economy, and the role of contentious politics in democratization. In addition to that, she has recently become interested in the history of social sciences in Yugoslavia and their particular genealogy to this day. Some of her recent works include Democratic Institutions and Authoritarian Rule in Southeast Europe (ECPR Press 2013), ), 'Why power is not a peripheral concern: Exploring the relationship between inequality and sustainability' (2014, with Domazet and Ančić), and 'Exploring commons theory for principles of a socialist governmentality' (RRPE 2016, with Žitko).

David Zweig (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1983) is Chair Professor of Social Science, and Director of the Center on Environment, Energy, and Resource Policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include China’s ‘resource diplomacy’, China’s human resources, Chinese politics and political economy, Sino-American relations, international and political economy, and East Asian international relations. His numerous research grants include “Resource Diplomacy under Hegemony” (HK$685,000, RGC, 2010–13), “Hong Kong People on the Mainland: A Force for Integration?” (HK$799,017, Central Policy Unit, 2007–13), and “Hong Kong’s Contribution to China’s Modernization” (HK$600,000, Shui-On Group, 2006-7). He won the SHSS Outstanding Teaching Award in 1999 after finishing second in 1998. Recent publications include Internationalizing China: Domestic Interests and Global Linkages, Globalization and China’ Reforms (ed. with Chen Zhimin), and “Images of the World: Studying Abroad and Chinese Attitudes towards International Affairs” (with Han Donglin).

Kristen Looney is an assistant professor of Asian Studies and Government at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses on Chinese politics. Dr. Looney completed her PhD in Government at Harvard University in 2012. Trained as a comparative political scientist, she is completing a book manuscript on the politics of rural development in East Asia, focusing on state-led modernization campaigns in China (2000s), Taiwan (1950s-1970s) and South Korea (1950s-1970s). She is also interested in rural governance and party building under authoritarianism. 

Dr. Looney's research has been supported by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Blakemore Foundation, the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships Program, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard. Dr. Looney holds a B.A. from Wellesley College in Chinese Studies. She is fluent in Chinese and has some training in Korean language as well.

Dr. David A. Palmer is an Associate Professor and head of the department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong, which he joined in 2008. A native of Toronto, he graduated from McGill University in Anthropology and East Asian Studies. After completing his PhD in the Anthropology of Religion at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, he was the Eileen Barker Fellow in Religion and Contemporary Society at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and, from 2004 to 2008, director of the Hong Kong Centre of the French School of Asian Studies (Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient), located at the Institute for Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of the award-winning Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in China (Columbia University Press, 2007), co-author with Vincent Goossaert of The Religious Question in Modern China (University of Chicago Press, 2011; awarded the Levenson Book Prize of the Association for Asian Studies). He is currently finishing a book manuscript, co-authored with Rundong Ning, tentatively titled Intimate Utopias: Volunteering, Individualization and Civil Society in China. 

Rundong Ningis an anthropologist currently living and doing research in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo. After obtaining a BSc with a major in biological sciences, he began his study of anthropology in the Hong Kong Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and got an MPhil in sociocultural anthropology in 2014. Then he worked as a research assistant in the Faculty of Social Sciences of the HKU, collaborating with Dr. David Palmer, who had been his supervisor during his study at the HKU, in the research of volunteerism in contemporary China. Since October 2015, he has lived in Brazzaville and worked on a new project about Chinese in Africa. He will start his doctoral study in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University in August 2016.

Julie Hemment received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and is currently Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research to date examines issues of gender, youth, NGOs and civil society in postsocialist Russia. Her first book, Empowering Women in Russia: Aid, NGOs and Activism (Indiana University Press, 2007), examined nineties-era democratization projects from the vantage point of provincial Russian women’s groups. Her most recent research – supported by the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, IREX, and the National Science Foundation – has tracked the aftermath of international development aid in post-Soviet Russia by interrogating Putin-era civil society projects. Her second book, Youth Politics in Putin’s Russia: Producing Patriots and Entrepreneurs (Indiana University Press, 2015) ethnographically examines the controversial nationalist youth projects that proliferated between 2005-2011, exploring both the forces that prompted them and the motivation of their participants.