Professors Yu Wang and Melanie Manion work closely with others who constitute the center’s executive committee.
Edmund Malesky
Professor of Political Economy, Duke University
Edmund Malesky is a Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Political Science at Duke University. His research focuses on economic developme
nt, governance, and the political economy of authoritarian institutions in Southeast Asia and China. In 2012, he received a state medal from the Government of Vietnam for his role in promoting economic development through USAID’s Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index; in 2013, he was appointed by President Obama to serve on the board of the Vietnam Education Foundation. He has published numerous articles in leading political science and economics journals, as well as China’s Governance Puzzle: Enabling Transparency and Participation in a Single-Party State (Cambridge University Press, 2017, with Jonathan Stromseth and Dimitar Gueorguiev) and Incentives to Pander: How Politicians Use Corporate Welfare for Political Gain (Cambridge University Press, 2018, co-authored with Nate Jensen). He holds a BSFS from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, a PhD from Duke University (2004), and has held, inter alia, a Harvard Academy Fellowship and a Rockefeller Bellagio Residency Fellowship.
Andrew MacDonald
Assistant Professor of Social Science, Duke Kunshan University
Andrew MacDonald is an Assistant Professor of Social Science at Duke Kunshan University.
He received his BA in in History and MA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and his MPhil and PhD in Politics from Oxford University (2015). He was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville in 20172017. Dr. MacDonald’s primary interest is in finding new ways of unlocking data to better understand individual level outcomes in China. His research focuses on service provision in authoritarian regimes and the incentive structure of developing nations in providing social welfare benefits as well as how individuals are impacted by and react to state narratives and ideology.
Mengqi Wang
Assistant Professor of Social Science, Duke Kunshan University
Mengqi Wang is an Assistant Professor of Social Science at Duke Kunshan University.
She received her BA in Economics and in Chinese and Media Studies from Beijing Normal University, and her MA and PhD in Anthropology from Brandeis University (2017). Dr. Wang’s research focuses on economic anthropology and how home ownership and property relations implicate and structure state power, capitalism, and everyday life in post-socialist China as well as among overseas Chinese.
Giovanni Zanalda
Associate Research Professor of Social Science, Economics, and History, Duke University
Giovanni Zanalda is an Associate Research Professor in the Social Science Research Institute, Department of Economics, and Department of History at Duke Univ
ersity. Since August 2015, he has been Director of the Duke University Center for International and Global Studies. He is also former Director of the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke University. He holds a BA from the University of Turin, an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University (2008). He is an economic historian specialized in the history of the international economy, finance, and development from the sixteenth century to the present. He has been a consultant in the Office of the Vice President, Development Economics at the World Bank and the Italian Delegation at the OECD (Financial Unit). He has conducted research and missions in various European, Asian, and African countries in addition to Argentina and the United States.
