Mary Gallagher

Mary E. Gallagher is the Amy and Alan Lowenstein Professor of Democracy, Democratization, and Human Rights at the University of Michigan where she is also the director of the International Institute. Professor Gallagher received her Ph.D. in politics in 2001 from Princeton University and her B.A. from Smith College in 1991. She was a foreign student in China in 1989 at Nanjing University. She also taught at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing from 1996-97. She was a Fulbright Research Scholar from 2003-04 at East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai, China. In 2012-13, she was a visiting professor at the Koguan School of Law at Shanghai Jiaotong Universit

Professor Gallagher is an expert in Chinese politics, law and society, and labor politics. Her most recent book is Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers and the State, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. She is also the author or editor of several other books, including Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (Princeton 2005); Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China (Cambridge 2011); From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization:  Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China (Cornell 2011); and Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies (Cambridge 2010). She is the author of many articles in academic and non-academic publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Comparative Political Studies, and World Politics. She is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations and has consulted for the World Bank, the US State Department and Department of Labor, and many other NGOs and international organizations.

Professor Gallagher is writing a recurring column focussed on China in World Politics Review. Read her articles here.