Leigh K. Jenco

Professor Leigh K. Jenco holds the position of Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science (on sabbatical during 2024/25). Her expertise spans Chinese Thought, Taiwan Studies, Political Philosophy, and Global Intellectual History. She previously taught at the National University of Singapore and has held visiting roles at Taiwan's Academia Sinica, National Taiwan University, and the University of Heidelberg.

Education:

• B.A. from Bard College
• M.A. and Ph.D. from University of Chicago

Her research explores late Ming neo-Confucian concepts of equality through literary theory and the 20th-century rediscovery of Chinese folksong compendia. She leads the £1.5M British Academy-funded 'Chinese Global Orders' project and was the principal investigator for the EU's 'East Asian Uses of the European Past' initiative. She served as associate editor of the American Political Science Review (2016–2020).

Her publications include groundbreaking monographs like Changing Referents (Oxford UP, 2015) and Making the Political (Cambridge UP, 2010), which bridge political theory with Chinese intellectual history. Current projects focus on Ming dynasty poetics and cross-cultural knowledge transfer.

Grants & Projects:

• Lead investigator for 'Chinese Global Orders' (£1.5M, British Academy)
• EU H2020 'East Asian Uses of the European Past' (€1.2M)

She is fluent in Classical Chinese, Mandarin, and English, and her work emphasizes global comparative frameworks to challenge Eurocentric narratives. Her research often intersects historical texts with contemporary political debates, particularly around cultural borrowing and identity formation.