I am an assistant professor of the Department of Sociology at the National Taiwan University.
My research interests are in the areas of race and ethnicity, political sociology, immigration, and gender, focusing especially on these issues in relation to contemporary Asian American politics. I teach gender, race and ethnicity, and fieldwork methods at NTU.
You can find my CV here.
My book project, Asian American Politics Paradox: Organizing Asian Americans’ Political Participation in a Southern
Metropolis, details how the entrenched racial politics in
the contemporary United States shape Asian American partisan political
organizers’ experiences and their approach to organizing Asian American voters,
many of whom are newly arrived immigrants. Particularly, it offers
insights into how Asian American political organizers in a new Asian immigration destination organize Asian American voters and struggle to increase Asian Americans’
political power. The findings are based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork
from March 2021 to November 2022 and 95 in-depth interviews with Asian American
partisan and non-partisan political organizers in Houston, Texas.
By
critically analyzing the experiences of Asian American political organizers, I
use Asian Americans as a case to spell out the way immigrant minorities reproduce and
reshape existing racial hierarchy when pursuing political power, as well as the
marginalization and ostracism that they face when participating in politics. The findings advance our understanding of the impact Asian Americans have on US politics and race relations today.
I have published two articles from my dissertation project:
1) “Asian Americans’ Racialized Incorporation into the Political Field”, is published in the journal Social Problems. In this article, I examine how the racialization of Asian Americans manifests in politics and how such processes shape Asian Americans’ racialized experiences and identity. This paper has received
the
Best Student Research Paper Award from the Asia and Asian American Section of the American Sociological Association, and an honorable mention from the International Migration Section Aristide Zolberg Distinguished Student Scholar
Award of the American Sociological Association.
2) “Gendered Panethnic Solidarity: The Experiences of Asian American Women in US Electoral Politics” is published in the journal Qualitative Sociology. It investigates the doubly disadvantaged position Asian American women occupy in politics, bringing the gender perspective into the literature on panethnicity.
I also have a collaboration project on college students’ attitudes toward guns. One of the articles from this project, titled “How Attitudes about Guns Develop over Time”, is published in the journal Sociological Perspective. Another one is forthcoming in The Handbook of Society and Firearms.
Photo Credit: Chen Liang