Welcome! I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania.

I study comparative authoritarian politics and the political economy of development with a focus on China. Specifically, I am interested in authoritarian institutions and their role in mediating the relationship between the ruling elites and ordinary citizens. For my dissertation, I examine how merit-based elite recruitment under authoritarianism serves as an institution of upward mobility to co-opt ordinary citizens and hence help stabilize the regime.

I received my Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 2018, and a B.A. in political science and economics from Smith College in 2011.

You can reach me at hanzhang.liu[at]columbia.edu.