I study technology and security in East Asia. My research examines novel approaches to coercion, escalation dynamics, great power nuclear strategy, and arms control. My scholarship draws on original Chinese-language sources and elite interviews conducted during fieldwork in China.
My first book, Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Strategy (Princeton University Press, 2025) examines how nuclear-armed countries coerce each other using military force without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war, and specifically how China has coped with this dilemma by developing capabilities for space, cyber, and conventional missile. My research has been published in International Security, Security Studies, Texas National Security Review, and Journal of Strategic Studies.
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, I am also a Faculty Fellow at Perry World House and affiliated with both the Center for the Study of Contemporary China and the Browne Center for International Politics.
I completed my Ph.D. at the Political Science Department at MIT in 2018, where I was also a member of the Security Studies Program. I was a Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 2020-1, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University in 2018-9, a pre-doctoral fellow in the Cyber Security Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School in 2017-8, and a Ph.D. Research Fellow at the Renmin University of China in 2015-6. I spent over a year doing field work in China while in graduate school, supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, MIT Center for International Studies, and the China Confucius Institute.
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University from 2019-2021.
Before commencing my Ph.D., I was a Research Associate at the Lowy Institute for International Policy and was admitted to practice as a lawyer in Australia.
Photo (left): missile testing equipment at a former missile testing base outside of Beijing.
