Diana Fu

Diana Fu is associate professor of political science at The University of Toronto and director of the East Asia Seminar Series at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.  She is a non-resident fellow at Brookings Institution, a China fellow at the Wilson Center, and a public intellectuals fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations.

Her research examines civil society, popular contention, state control, and authoritarian citizenship in China. She is author of the award-winning book “Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China” (2018, Cambridge). Based on political ethnography inside labor organizations, it uncovers how Chinese migrant workers organized for rights without protesting en masse. It received best book awards from the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the International Studies Association. Her articles have appeared in Comparative Political Studies (co-winner of the 2017 best article in CPS), Governance (winner of the 2019 American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Scholarly Article Award), Modern China, Perspectives on Politics, and The China Journal.

Her research and commentary have also appeared 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 has hosted the TVO documentary series “China Here and Now” and POLITICO China Watcher.

Dr. Fu received her D.Phil in Politics form Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar and previously served as National Co-secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship for China. She has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.