Tony Zirui Yang

Tony Zirui Yang is a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and an Associate at the University of Oxford China Centre. Starting Fall 2025, he will join Emory University as an Assistant Professor of Political Science. His research focuses on authoritarian politics, political communication, public opinion, and political methodology, with regional expertise in China and Southeast Asia. He employs computational methods (text/audio-as-data), survey experiments, and qualitative fieldwork. His work appears in journals like the Journal of Politics, International Organization, and Comparative Political Studies.

Education: PhD in Political Science (Washington University in St. Louis, 2024); LL.B. in Law (Renmin University of China, 2018).

Research Interests: Explores censorship mechanisms, propaganda effectiveness, LGBTQ+ prejudice, and authoritarian governance. Notable projects include analyzing China's propaganda during the 2022 pandemic shift and participatory censorship dynamics. Methodologically, he combines multi-method approaches to study state-society interactions in autocracies.

Teaching: At Emory, he will teach courses on Chinese politics and global affairs. Previously, he tutored at Nuffield College and guest lectured on authoritarian institutions and protest dynamics.