معرفی
Professor Yang Zhang is a faculty member at American University's School of International Service (SIS), where he teaches courses on Bottom-Up Politics, Contentious Politics, Empire and Imperialism, Global and Comparative Governance, and Research Design Seminar. His academic work bridges sociology, political science, and historical analysis with a regional focus on China.
His educational background includes Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Sociology from the University of Chicago, and M.A. and B.A. degrees from Tsinghua University in China. He is fluent in Mandarin.
- Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology, University of Chicago
- M.A. and B.A., Tsinghua University
Professor Zhang's research spans comparative historical sociology, political sociology, contentious politics, social networks, sociology of knowledge, philosophy of social sciences, and social theory. His primary focus examines large-scale religious and ethnic rebellions in the Qing Empire, state building in late imperial China, political conflicts during China's reform era using elite conversational network analysis, and environmental governance in contemporary China. He has developed innovative approaches to studying causality, contingency, counterfactuals, comparison, and falsificationism in historical analysis.
His scholarly publications demonstrate consistent productivity with articles appearing in top journals including American Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Journal of Historical Sociology, Mobilization, and Voluntas. His work shows increasing methodological sophistication, moving from traditional historical analysis to network-based approaches for understanding elite politics, while maintaining strong theoretical grounding in social theory and philosophy of science.
- Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award (Honorable Mention) from Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of ASA (2024)
- Charles Tilly Article Award from ASA's Comparative-Historical Sociology Section (2022)
- William Cromwell Award for Outstanding Teaching (2021)
- PhD Mentor Award (2024)
As an educator, Professor Zhang has received significant recognition including the William Cromwell Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2021 and the PhD Mentor Award in 2024. He serves as a consulting editor for the American Journal of Sociology and as an executive committee member of the Social Science History Association. His media presence is substantial, with commentary on Chinese politics appearing in major international outlets including Associated Press, BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, The Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Reuters, and Washington Post.
