Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
I study the intersections of technology, law, society, and political economy. My research examines how state power, market forces, and technological change interact to reshape work, governance, and public life—from China's digital economy to the global politics of critical industries. I am on sabbatical leave in AY 2026–2027, based at the American Academy in Berlin and the Paris Institute for Advanced Study.
I am a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and a Senior Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. I am also affiliated with several centers at Harvard, including the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies—where I am one of the co-leaders of the Taiwan Studies initiative—the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Asia Center.
I was born and raised in Taiwan. My academic background bridges law and sociology—I hold an LLM and a JSD from Yale Law School, as well as a PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan. Following my graduation from Michigan in 2013, I served as a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University from 2013 to 2016. In academic year 2018–2019, I was a visiting professor at Sciences Po in France.
My research spans political economy, political sociology, economic sociology, the sociology of work and labor, science and technology studies, law and society, the sociology of media and information technologies, development, and China studies, with a primary emphasis on qualitative and comparative methods.
My research has received numerous awards and honors from multiple sections of the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, the Law and Society Association, the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, the American Academy in Berlin, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and Harvard University, among other organizations.
Princeton University Press, 2023
Princeton University Press, 2018
The semiconductor shortage, intensifying U.S.–China rivalry, and fears about dependence on overseas supply chains have set in motion one of the most consequential industrial migrations of the twenty-first century. At its center is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s leading chipmaker, whose expansion from Taiwan to Arizona has become a test of whether advanced industrial capacity can be moved from one society to another.
Based on years of fieldwork in the United States and Taiwan, The Great Chip Migration offers an unprecedented inside account of this experiment. It asks: What made the transplantation of TSMC’s leading-edge production to Arizona possible, and what are the achievements and limits of the industrial capacity it has created?
The book begins with a paradox. Advanced production is widely understood to depend on specialized knowledge, supplier networks, institutions, labor markets, and social arrangements accumulated over decades. Yet TSMC achieved leading-edge production in Arizona before much of that supporting system could be reconstructed locally. The book shows that U.S. geopolitical leverage helped initiate the migration, while industrial policy translated geopolitical pressure into a concrete investment project. TSMC then made production possible by transporting engineers, organizational routines, and supplier relationships; maintaining extensive connections to Taiwan; and relying on regional institutions, workers, and families to fill the remaining gaps.
These arrangements reveal both the transplant’s remarkable accomplishment and its limits. Technical success can coexist with higher costs, continuing dependence on Taiwan, organizational conflict, workforce instability, and household disruption. The central question is therefore not simply whether Arizona can produce advanced chips, but whether that achievement can become locally rooted, socially sustainable, and capable of reproducing the people, knowledge, institutions, and relationships on which it depends.
Following policymakers, executives, engineers, educators, workers, and families across the United States and Taiwan, The Great Chip Migration shows how powerful states and firms initiate and accelerate industrial transplantation while its unresolved coordination costs are dispersed among state and local institutions, workers, and families. Community colleges are asked to build a workforce on a geopolitical timetable. Taiwanese engineers and their spouses sustain a demanding transnational production system. Local institutions improvise around responsibilities that industrial policy has only partially anticipated or funded.
Where most accounts focus on who will prevail in the global chip race, The Great Chip Migration reveals what moving that race onto new ground requires. It argues that geopolitical power can make advanced production mobile, but cannot by itself make that production locally rooted or self-sustaining. By tracing industrial transplantation from international power struggles to factories, community colleges, local institutions, and homes, the book shows how geopolitical competition is remaking—and testing—the social foundations of advanced production.
Supported by the American Academy in Berlin (Berlin Prize Fellowship), the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (FIAS Fellowship), the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship at Harvard.
Journal articles and book chapters
Since 2016, I have had the privilege of advising and mentoring approximately thirty individuals from diverse backgrounds, including PhD students in the Department of Sociology, LLM and SJD students at Harvard Law School, Masters students in the Regional Studies East Asia Program, undergraduates, and postdoctoral fellows at the Fairbank Center.
I am passionate about working with students interested in exploring the intersection between technology, law, society, economy, and politics.
I welcome inquiries about research collaborations, speaking invitations, and prospective student advising. Feel free to reach out.