person

Qinglian (Angela) Lu

Qinglian (Angela) Lu is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Stanford. Her research interests include social network analysis, computational social science, political sociology, and organizational theory.

Her dissertation, entitled “Bringing the Organization Back in: Personnel Mobility and Career Lines in Large Bureaucratic Systems,” uses original data from China and India in a comparative analysis (thanks to Prof. Xueguang Zhou and Prof. Sharique Hasan for data sharing). Bureaucratic institutions control critical resources in command economies. Who become their leaders have significant implications for political and socioeconomic development. Using computational techniques, the dissertation analyzes the impact of network connections and experience on career advancement, and the typical trajectories of bureaucratic mobility. The comparative analysis of China and India further shows how bureaucratic careers differ in authoritarian and democratic regimes.

Besides the study of bureaucracy, Qinglian is broadly interested in political movements and social change. She coauthored papers with Prof. Andrew Walder on the diffusion of the Cultural Revolution and economic recession in post-communist regimes, which appeared in the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review.