Diana Fu is a nonresident senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings and an associate professor at Cornell University where she directs the Levinson Program in China and Asia-Pacific Studies. Before joining Cornell, Fu was a professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Political Science. Her research examines both domestic and global China, with a focus on popular contention, state control, civil society, and diaspora politics. Her most recent co-authored book, “How Global China Governs its Diaspora,” analyzes the Chinese state’s playbook of control overseas to influence diasporas and what makes this statecraft distinctive (Cambridge, forthcoming). She is the author of “Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China” (Cambridge, 2018), which won best book awards from the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the International Studies Association.
Fu’s research and commentary on Chinese politics have been featured in BBC World Service, Bloomberg TV, CBC, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Reuters, US News & World Report, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Globe & Mail, and The New York Times, among others. She was a television host and script writer for the TVO documentary series, “China Here and Now.” She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in politics and a Master of Philosophy in development studies with distinction from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar and served as national co-secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship for China. She is a public intellectual fellow with the National Committee on US-China Relations and has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
Affiliations:
- National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Public Intellectuals Fellow
- Rhodes Trust, national co-secretary for the Rhodes Scholarships in China
- Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists, elected member
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Current Positions
- Associate Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University
- Public Intellectuals Fellow, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
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Past Positions
- Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto
- Visiting Fellow, Sciences Po Paris
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
- Predoctoral Fellow, MIT
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Education
- Ph.D., University of Oxford
- M.Phil., University of Oxford
- B.A., University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
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Languages
- Chinese (Mandarin)
- French