Faculty Fellows

Wang Xiaonan

Xiaonan Wang studies political economy and bureaucratic politics, with a regional specialization in China. Part of his research focuses on the political control of bureaucrats, the quality of government, and state-business relations. Part of his research focuses on Chinese overseas investment, especially on how Chinese investment affects local public opinion. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Maryland, College Park. During 2022-2023, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Columbia China and the World Program.

Ke Li

Ke Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at John Jay College, part of the City University of New York. Her research focuses on law and society, knowledge production and contestation, and gender politics in contemporary China. After receiving a joint Ph.D. in sociology and criminal justice at Indiana University, Bloomington, Li published journal articles as well as an award-winning book, Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, 2022).

In recent years, Li has branched out into new research areas. In collaborating with colleagues in mainland China, she has been building a project to examine the roles of expert knowledge in policymaking, lawmaking, and LGBTQ activism. This project unpacks how the state and civil society groups appropriate expert knowledge to formulate and advance their separate and somewhat conflicting agendas regarding sexual minorities in Chinese society. Through this project, Li will integrate her longtime interest in sociolegal studies, science and technology studies, and China studies

Zhihang Ruan

Zhihang Ruan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, the City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2023. His research interests include comparative political economy, international development, labor politics, and land institutions. His regional foci are China and Vietnam. His work has been published in The China Quarterly, and he has received awards from the Vietnam Studies Group of the Association of Asian Studies and the Southeast Asia Research Group.

Larry Au

Larry Au is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The City College of New York, CUNY. His research examines the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the production of biomedical knowledge, and asks how clinicians and scientists can better serve their patients and the public. Part of this work examines the globalization of precision medicine—or the use of genomics and other forms of big data to improve diagnosis and treatment—as a policy idea and scientific project, focusing primarily on its rise in China. Another part of this research looks at the politics of expertise around Long Covid, in particular, the experience of patients as they navigate uncertainties around their condition.