A political and comparative-historical sociologist, I specialize in the comparative studies of capitalism(s), socialism(s), and transitions in between, with a special emphasis on political economy and the dynamics of development in the Global South. I am particularly intrigued by questions pertaining to the politics of class, democracy, (de)mobilization, production and social reproduction.

I am currently turning my doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript, tentatively entitled “Whither Socialism? The Politics of Class and China’s Post-Mao Transition to Capitalism”. This project provides a distinct class-politics explanation of China’s transition from socialism to capitalism, arguing that the way in which urban industrial workers – ideologically and rhetorically celebrated as the “leading class” of Chinese socialism – interacted with the Party-state in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s significantly shaped the historical trajectory of China’s post-Mao reform. Through this project, I attempt a bold rethinking of what it means to understand socialism, capitalism, democracy, authoritarianism, and class subjectivity comparatively and transnationally.

The dissertation on which this book project is based received the 2025 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Those who are interested in reading this work in its dissertation form can access it here and here. In addition, a stand-alone article that originated from this project was recently published in International Review of Social History.

My previous research has examined economic policymaking, class politics, mobilization dynamics, and populism in a variety of contexts and using diverse methods. In particular, an award-winning article published in Theory and Society used the case of taxation on private homeownership as a lens to both make sense of a key moment - the "Chongqing Model" - in China's recent political history and advance a Bourdieusian state theory.

While in graduate school, I was extensively involved in academic labor organizing. I was part of the Harvard graduate workers’ successful campaign to form a union in 2018, as well as the multi-year organizing efforts that led to the historic UC-UAW strikes of 2022. I was also a proud supporter of UAWD, the rank-and-file movement spearheaded by grassroots workers in the auto sector for democratic reform in the UAW.