I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Emory University. I am also Princeton Dissertation Scholar at the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice and EPOVB Early-Career Fellow at APSA’s Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Section.

I study how political communication and elite behavior shape public opinion across autocracies and democracies, with regional foci on Greater China and the United States. My research on autocracies, on the one hand, unpacks how autocrats manipulate mass beliefs and generate democratic legitimacy through media control and political rhetoric. My research on democracies, on the other hand, elucidates how political (mis)information, ideology, and intergroup dynamics constrain individual preferences for social policy and international cooperation. Bridging autocratic and democratic publics, I research how global citizens understand contested concepts such as democracy and patriotism, and examine how such bottom-up understandings feed back into domestic politics and international relations.

I hold an MPhil in Economic Research from the University of Cambridge, where I was Hughes Hall Scholar and Hong Kong Scholar. I also hold a BEcon in Economics, Politics, and Public Administration from the University of Hong Kong, where I was John Swire Scholar, Undergraduate Research Fellow, and a first-generation-to-college student.

Growing up in Hong Kong’s public housing shaped how I think about social inequality, social justice, and social policy. It also drew me closer to the masses, whose formation of political attitudes is the crux of my research agenda.

My research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, European Union Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Organization, Political Behavior, and Political Science Research and Methods.