Initiated a new and ambitious quantitative research program in collaboration with Social Psychologist Dr. Jeffrey Lucas, based on my dissertation. We investigate whether and how cultural backgrounds shape people’s orientation toward authorities and hierarchies. We also build race into the model, especially expecting White Americans and African Americans to have different attitudes toward authorities based on their historically privileged and disadvantaged group positions. We have collected preliminary data that partially support our hypotheses, and we have just submitted a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) in August 2018.

Independently taught the undergraduate courses "Sociology of Gender" and "Introduction to Sociology" and received excellent student evaluations.

Worked as a team with people from three different institutions. Combined a survey of elegant design and a psychological experiment to examine whether people in the U.S. today still tend to evoke images of men when they think of leaders. Analyzed both sets of data with statistical models and showed that people still associated leadership characteristics with masculine traits, even people committed to feminism. Carried important behavioral implications related to corporation promotion and political voting.

Won the Best Poster Award at the Annual Conference of Population Association of America. Designed a sophisticated online survey investigating Asian Americans’ attitudes about liberated sexual behaviors of men and women. Analyzed hundreds of responses with statistical models and revealed the important pattern that Asian American men tended to prefer sexually conservative women for marriage, but not necessarily for dating, regardless of their degrees of general American Acculturation.

Participated in a research team funded by the National Science Foundation. Conducted psychological experiments in China and the U.S. and analyzed the data with statistical models to investigate whether different structures of interpersonal interactions lead to cognitive orientations that are either holistic and contextual (East Asian) or individualistic and analytic (Western).

Independent dissertation project. Funded by the National Science Foundation. For the research, I lived and ate with the rural migrant workers in two factories in China for over a year. I built deep rapport and conducted participant observation and interviews with 160 male and female migrant workers, managers, and business owners. And I collected and analyzed over 1,000 pages of detailed observation and interview data on factory management and rural migrant workers’ subjective perceptions of their work and lives.

Worked as a teaching assistant for a range of courses including Sociological Theory, Research Methods, Statistics, Demographic Techniques, and Education Inequality in America.

Participated in a research team funded by the National Institute of Health. Used nationally representative Longitudinal Data that span 16 years (China Health and Nutrition Survey 1991, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006) and Growth Curve Modeling techniques to investigate how marriage separation caused by rural migration impacted the health of left-behind spouses in the countryside. Recommended related health policies.

In addition to writing academic papers, I keep a column in an online magazine, where I communicate my research to the public in an accessible way. Sixthone is a team of writers, editors, and researchers from within China and abroad. We belong to the state-funded Shanghai United Media Group. (http://www.sixthtone.com/users/21198)

Part-time. Conducted research projects on the values of current young Chinese customers in the context of rapid social change as well as ever-lasting traditional cultural influence in China.