Welcome to my website!

I am a PhD candidate (near completion and on job market) in Political Science at Freie Universisät Berlin. I also work as a Predoctoral researcher at a research project on Digital governance in China funded by the European Research Council (ERC). My research interests lie in the intersection of politics (particularly authoritarian politics), psychology (particularly affect and emotion), and technology (particularly AI and other general purpose technologies). Specifically, I am interested in researching macro-level transformation of political structure and institution in modern autocracies and democracies, and micro-level interaction between the psychological dimension and digital-enabled political control (aka. digital control).

Methodologically, I am well-versed in applying both quantitative and experimental approaches using large-scale surveys, experiments, and computational multimodel techniques, as well as qualitative, grounded, in-depth, and contextualized method such as fieldwork, participant observation, and interviews.

My dissertation investigates the dynamics and consequences of emerging digital authoritarianism by examining state–society relations from the understudied perspective of emotion. Theoretically, it bridges conventional research on authoritarian politics with the political psychology of emotion and proposes an emotion-centered approach to studying state–society interactions shaped by digital control. Using China as a key empirical case and employing a mixed-methods research design, it explores the multifaceted role of emotion in the everyday operation of digital authoritarianism. The thesis aims to enrich current understanding of the noninstitutional and nonmaterial dimensions of contemporary authoritarian rule.

My work has been published in Perspectives on Politics, Regulation & Governance, among others.

If you are interested in my research, collaboration, or have any question, don’t hesitate to contact me.