Her main research interests are local government and popular protest in contemporary China. Her dissertation explores peasant protest against heavy taxes and fees in the 1990s and the early 2000s. She is currently working on rural development policies (“constructing the new socialist countryside”) in response to peasant protest. Her work appears in The China Quarterly (forthcoming), The China Journal (January 2015), Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (2013), and the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society (forthcoming).