I study where the capacity to govern comes from.

My research sits between development economics and the political economy of institutions. The starting question is old: where does state capacity come from? The answer I have been working toward is that in most of the places I care about, capacity is not designed or inherited. It is negotiated, continuously, inside institutions whose rules are deliberately left unclear, and the same ambiguity that lets capacity grow can also let it be captured or hollowed out.

I grew up in Jixi, Heilongjiang, and have studied and worked in Changshu, Chicago, Washington, Saint Paul, Beijing, and New York. At Yale I read anthropology and political science within the African Studies MA, and I am part of the Genocide Studies Program's graduate cohort on Mass Atrocities in the Digital Era. Alongside research I work with the UN Office of the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict and with the World Bank's youth engagement program, and I run SEESALT, a small development organization I founded in 2018.

Research

Three questions organize my current work.

• Who fails the filter? Institutional rules that are written but never checked still change behavior, and they do so unevenly. Using the full Brazilian firm registry, I trace who is screened out by a minimum capital requirement that no one verifies.
• Attributive ambiguity. When a disaster can be read either as an act of nature or as a failure of governance, states anticipate the reading and invest accordingly. Visible response capacity grows; quiet prevention lags. Cases from the Himalaya and North Africa.
• Negotiation-based capacity. Beginning with Rwanda's post-1994 institutions, I have argued that capacity can be generated within institutional gray zones where the state is at once extractor and provider, and I am now following one such record, the gacaca archive, into its digital afterlife and the custody politics around it.

Papers

• Who Fails the Filter? Size, Verification and the Incidence of an Unchecked Minimum Capital Requirement. Solo-authored. Under review, European Journal of Law and Economics. SSRN working paper, 2026.
• Attributive Ambiguity: How Anticipated Deniability Deforms State Disaster Capacity. Solo-authored. Prepared for the AAG Annual Meeting, New York, February 2027.
• Who Keeps the Record of Negotiation? Custody, Capacity, and the Digital Afterlife of Rwanda's Gacaca Archive. In progress. Mass Atrocities in the Digital Era graduate cohort, Genocide Studies Program, Yale, 2026–27.
• 扎根区域国别的新发展主义：全球南方本体的知识创新路径 (with Xu Xiuli, China Agricultural University). In preparation, Chinese-language.
• Does AI Clinical Decision Support Build or Erode Physician Competence? A Randomized Evaluation with Standardized Patients in Rural Primary Care. Research design. First place, PKU–Yale Global Health Economics Summer Institute, Beijing, 2026.
• After the Catastrophe: Rwanda's Transformation. Honors thesis, Macalester College, 2026. Highest distinction. Full text.

Positions

• 2024 –Research fellow for Tonderai Chikuhwa, Senior Policy Advisor, UN Office of the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in ConflictMachine-learning analysis of five decades of Security Council resolutions
• 2023 –Lead, Informal Economy, World Bank Youth Advisory Group (CIVIC)Washington, DC
• 2018 –Founder and Executive Director, SEESALTCommunity-centered development programs across five countries
• 2026 – 27Don Lavoie Fellow, Mercatus Center at George Mason University
• 2026Invited moderator, Youth Dialogue on Global DevelopmentCollege of International Development and Global Agriculture, China Agricultural University

Education

• 2026 – 28MA in African Studies, Yale UniversityMacMillan Center full-tuition fellowship
• 2026BA Honors in International Studies, magna cum laude, Macalester CollegeKofi Annan/Turck Scholar
• 2021 – 25Graduate credentials, Harris School of Public Policy, University of ChicagoInternational policy; monetary policy and international finance; policy analytics
• 2019 – 22International Baccalaureate, UWC Changshu China

Recognition

• Rhodes Scholarship finalist, China constituency, 2026
• Brown University Global Fellows in Courage, finalist, 2025
• First place, UN Tech Over Hackathon 2025, Team SEESALT (UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies)
• Qingmiao Scholar, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, ranked first of 274
• Rise Global Finalist (Schmidt Futures and the Rhodes Trust), 2021
• 13th Soong Ching Ling Scholarship, 2018

Beyond research

Thirteen years of Peking opera training; I also play the guqin. I write literary nonfiction in Chinese under the project name 野花繁盛处 (Where Wildflowers Grow), and I draw 星河兔, a WeChat sticker series modeled on a real rabbit named Pampam, who now serves as SEESALT's Chief Happiness Officer.