I am a political sociologist in training, with research interests at the intersection of social movements in authoritarian contexts and social network formation.
(1) My current project, The Platform of Contention, investigates collective action among gig workers in China through a mixed-methods approach. Treating gig worker strikes in China as deviant cases that challenge prevailing theoretical expectations, I examine the conditions under which platform algorithms inadvertently facilitate strike mobilizations. I also explore how the gamification of work, designed to discipline labor, can instead give rise to a new kind of bargaining power that allows gig workers to exert leverage. This line of research generally strives to unpack the "repression-mobilization paradox" to reveal conditions where state repression can backfire in different repressive contexts, ranging from contemporary China to Europe during WWII.
(2) My second line of research employs computational methods to analyze social networks and the dynamics of embedded inequality. My previous project, Cov-Netps (COVID-19 Pandemic and Social Network Panel Study, inspired by the UC Nets project), examined population health in Wuhan, China, during and after the lockdown. This work revealed how the pandemic deepened health inequalities in a unique and extreme setting—where disparities in resources and connections could become, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
[Note: Updated by LLM in Aug 2025 based on my previous bio]

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