About

I am a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. As a political and comparative historical sociologist, my research concerns the interaction between the state, economy, and the environment, with special attention to infrastructure, technology, and their energetic underpinnings. My work primarily focuses on China, but I am also very interested in transnationalism, global history, empire, and post-colonial theory.

My dissertation answers why the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s largest consumer of fossil energy and producer of renewable energy, and why the United States and European states are falling behind in leading renewable energy production. My project seeks to treat energy as a prism through which the state, global capitalism, and society interact, paying specific attention to how successive Chinese state-builders imagined development, sovereignty, and modernity through energetic imaginaries.

At UChicago, I am also a doctoral researcher at the Urban Theory Lab. I serve as an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Sociology. I am also a Research Fellow at the Arrighi Center for Global Studies at Johns Hopkins University.