Dr. May Farid is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego. I am also a nonresident China Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Before joining the Kroc School, Dr. Farid conducted research as a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and taught at the University of Hong Kong. She holds a DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford. Outside academia, Dr. Farid conducted an institutional capacity building program for rural grassroots NGOs in China for seven years, and carried out a four-year research project on development in ethnic minority regions for China’s leading government policy think-tank under the State Council.
She studies the interaction between community groups and states, with a focus on policy influence under authoritarianism and, more recently, transnational advocacy. Her research explores how citizen groups shape state policies in a variety of contexts: grassroots NGO and INGO advocacy in China, cross-sector knowledge communities and local policy, and INGOs promoting global environmental governance in China's outbound aid and investment. Another branch of her research studies NGO interventions to empower citizens in the global South, such as fighting misinformation and promoting social cohesion in India. Her work has been published in International Affairs, World Development, Studies in Comparative International Development, Voluntas, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science.
Ordinary citizens are increasingly taking individual and collective initiative to address development challenges. Citizens of authoritarian regimes--and many democracies--struggle to have a voice in development and policy. How do citizen initiatives impact state policy and practice? What social and political dynamics foster citizen engagement?
