I am a political theorist working across comparative political theory, East Asian political thought, democratic theory, state theory, and international relations theory. My research examines how Chinese political thought can reshape key ideas in political theory, including the nature of the state, the basis of limited government, and the conditions of democratic legitimacy.

My first book project, Holistic Dynamism: A Chinese Conception of the State, develops a non-liberal theory of limited government grounded in an organic view of state authority. Drawing on late Qing and early Republican thinkers such as Liang Qichao, Zhang Junmai, and Gao Yihan in dialogue with Hobbes, Schmitt, Pettit, and Skinner, I conceptualize the state as a moral and institutional agent capable of ethical judgment, internal restraint, and adaptive transformation. The project advances a notion of “holistic dynamic sovereignty” that reconciles decisiveness with plural coordination and reinterprets tianxia (all-under-heaven) as a relational, non-imperialist vision of global order.

My second book project, A New State of Democracy, asks whether democracy can be a property of state personality rather than government design. Building on East Asian sources, especially Mou Zongsan’s idea of ethical self-restriction, it explores how equality, public reason, and responsiveness can be realized through the state’s moral and institutional capacities, offering an alternative to liberal and procedural models of democratic legitimacy.

My work appears in Philosophy & Social Criticism, Chinese Political Science Review, and Comparative Philosophy. I serve as Treasurer of the International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy (ISCWP) and was previously Coordinator of the UCLA Political Theory Workshop.

Education

PhD in Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles (2025)
MA in Social Sciences, University of Chicago (2020)
Honours in Philosophy, University of Sydney (2019)
BA in Political Science and Philosophy, Australian National University (2018)