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 and Public Policy and the Department of Political Science.  She is also a senior 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.

Dr. Fu’s research examines diaspora politics, state control and popular contention, with a focus on contemporary China. She is author of the award-winning book “Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China” (2018, Cambridge University Press and Columbia Weatherhead Series). 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. She is currently working on a co-authored second book, “How Global China Governs its Diaspora: Consent and Coercion,” examining the domestic origins of China’s playbook of diaspora control and how it is distinguishable from other diaspora-sending states (Cambridge Elements).  The policy angle of this project also elucidates the difference between foreign influence and interference. Academic 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), Perspectives on Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, and The China Journal, among others.

Dr. Fu is a regular commentator on Chinese politics and has been interviewed by 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 previously hosted the TVO documentary series “China Here and Now” and guest-edited POLITICO China Watcher.

She received a 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.