My research sits at the intersection of democratic theory, political culture, and diaspora studies, informed by the perspective and experience of Hong Kong and its diasporas.
I am a political theorist by training, with proficiencies in visual, archival, and ethnographic methods of inquiry. My work seeks to explore an empirically grounded approach to theorizing democracy and sovereignty in its postcolonial and diasporic predicaments.
Recent discussions of immigrant political life in the United States highlight the diversity of political worldviews across migrant communities. This dissertation focuses on the Hong Kong diaspora in the United States, examining how Hong Kong immigrants translate political values across contexts, carrying historically grounded attachments while engaging new institutional, cultural, and political environments. Situating recent migration within longer histories of Chinese migration—from 19-century movements during the Gold Rush to later waves around the 1997 handover—the project traces how experiences of governance, social change, and uncertainty inform aspirations for stability and belonging. It examines how desires for a secure life, alongside the institutional and affective legacies of Hong Kong’s political development, shape the ways individuals interpret and transform their political commitments over time. Grounded in ethnographic research in the Bay Area and Texas, the dissertation develops an empirically grounded political theory of home and democratic imaginaries. It is attentive to lived experience, and highlights how memories of past events, everyday practices of homemaking, and encounters with new social and political norms shape how democracy is understood, practiced, and reimagined across contexts.