My research asks two questions about international organisations. The first is how a rising power changes them. China writes rules, reshapes global policymaking and seeks leadership posts in a way that is at once cautious and ambitious, which leaves much of its behaviour puzzling. I study this through UN leadership posts, UN staffing and the Global Security Initiative. The second is how international organisations sustain cooperation without enforcement, which I study through WTO regulatory scrutiny and donors’ earmarked funding of UN agencies.
My recent research extends these questions to China’s diplomacy and to artificial intelligence in international politics. I study why Chinese leaders meet counterparts in third countries during crises, and I benchmark the foreign-policy attitudes of large language models. My work has appeared in the Review of International Organizations, International Affairs, the Journal of Global Security Studies and Global Policy, as well as in a Lowy Institute report and The Washington Post. My research has been supported by NTU’s Supporting Pioneering Academic Research Knowledge (SPARK) White Space Funding and UCLA’s Alice Belkin Memorial Scholarship.
Employment
- Early Career Fellow, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 2026–2029
- Graduate Student Researcher, Center for Effective Global Action, UC Berkeley, 2025–2026
- Research Specialist, Department of Politics, Princeton University, 2024–2025
Education
- PhD, Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, 2026
- MS, Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles, 2026
- MA, International Relations, University of Chicago, 2019
- BSocSc, Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong, 2017