Diana Fu is associate professor in political science and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She is a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, a China Fellow at the Wilson Center, and, a public intellectuals fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations. She has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.

Her research examines popular contention, state control, civil society, and authoritarian citizenship, 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 China’s migrant workers organized for rights without protesting en masse. It received best book awards from American Political Science Association Association (comparative politics), the American Sociological Association (contentious politics), and the International Studies Association (political sociology). Her articles have appeared in Comparative Political Studies (co-winner of the 2017 editorial board’s best article award), Governance (winner of the 2019 American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Scholarly Article Award), Modern China, Perspectives on Politics, and The China Journal. She is guest-editor of a Comparative Political Studies special issue on ethnographic approaches to studying contention (2021).

Dr. Fu’s research and commentary on Chinese politics have appeared in 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 was a television host and scriptwriter for the TVO documentary series, “China Here and Now” and guest host of POLITICO China Watcher.

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She holds a D.Phil. in Politics and an M.Phil. in Development Studies with distinction from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She is currently serving as National Co-secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship for China. She previously held fellowships at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She enjoys Latin dance and creative writing.