I am an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. My research focuses on business-government relations, bureaucracy, good governance, and authoritarian politics, with a particular interest in China. My work has been published and is forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, The China Quarterly, and other journals.

I am the recipient of the Kellogg/Notre Dame Award for Best Comparative Politics Paper from the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. I earned my PhD in Political Science from Duke University. Prior to Duke, I obtained my bachelor’s degree from Fudan University and completed my MPhil at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Before joining NUS, I was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Leitner Program of Political Economy, MacMillan Center, Yale University.

You can contact me via email at zeren.li@nus.edu.sg.