SNF Agora Institute welcomed Yuen Yuen Ang this January as the first new named professor at the Center for Economy and Society (CES) and the Department of Political Science in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Established in February 2022 with $11 million in funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the CES is a multidisciplinary center within the SNF Agora Institute that brings together thinkers on the left and right to reinvigorate debates about politics and economics and identify new possibilities for change.
Ang is a cross-disciplinary scholar of political economy, focusing on China and on the themes of development and innovation. Her work has been recognized for both its scholarly and public impact. In 2020, she was the inaugural recipient of Theda Skocpol Prize, awarded by the American Political Science Association for “impactful contributions to comparative politics.” She has won book awards in political economy, economics, and sociology, and was named one of the “100 Most Influential Academics in Government” by Apolitical. She is a frequently invited speaker and an award-winning teacher.
“Yuen Yuen Ang is without question one of the most insightful political economists in the world, working on the most important question of the last half century: how did China escape poverty so rapidly?” says Steve Teles, CES director and a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins.
“She asks difficult and often politically inconvenient questions—like, how was China able to grow when corruption is so widespread?—with great analytical power and intellectual bravery. She is a model of the kind of intellectual heterodoxy that the Center for Economy and Society will strive for, and will be a major asset not just to the SNF Agora Institute, but the university as a whole.”