WELCOME!

I am a Lecturer in Quantitative Political and Social Research at Birkbeck, University of London. I am also the Director of Birkbeck’s interdisciplinary Postgraduate Social Research Programmes and a Research Associate of the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research.

My research interrogates the institutional and policy foundations of democratic and authoritarian governance in multi-ethnic societies, integrating qualitative, quantitative and computational methods, including applications of generative AI in social sciences research. With China as my primary case anchor and a comparative reach extending to India and Southeast Asia, my work addresses a range of core questions in comparative politics and political economy, such as the conditions sustaining authoritarian resilience and nation-state building.

Before coming to Birkbeck, I held fellowship positions at Tsinghua University (Beijing) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Between 2026 and 2028, I will be a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Methodology at LSE.

Email: c.cheng[at]bbk.ac.uk.