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Kelly Hammond is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Dr. Hammond received her Ph.D. in East Asian history from Georgetown University in July 2015. Her work specializes in the history of Islam in East Asia, particularly focusing on the political, social, and cultural history of Chinese Muslims from the Qing Dynasty through into the People’s Republic of China.

Diana Fu is an associate professor of political science at The University of Toronto and an affiliate of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy Asian Institute. Dr. Fu's research examines popular contention, state power, civil society, and citizenship, with a focus on contemporary China. Her book Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China (2018, Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics Series) theorizes a counter-intuitive form of mobilization under authoritarian rule. It won the 2018 American Political Science Association’s Luebbert Prize for the best book in comparative politics, the 2019 International Studies Association’s best book award in international political sociology, and the 2019 Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the American Sociological Association.

Iza Ding is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, with a secondary appointment in public policy at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. As a scholar of political development and legacies across the communist and post-communist world, she uses diverse methodological tools to explore pressing public policy issues. She has active projects in the realms of environmental policy, legal development, bureaucratic organizations, and public opinion. Dr. Ding received her Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, and her B.A. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, earning a dual degree in political science and Russian and Eastern European studies. She has in-depth knowledge and field experience in China, Poland, Vietnam, and North Korea.

Keisha A. Brown is an assistant professor of history at Tennessee State University in the Department of History, Political Science, Geography, and Africana Studies. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, earned her doctorate from the University of Southern California, and was a 2018–2019 postdoctoral fellow at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. Dr. Brown is an Asian studies scholar with a regional focus on East Asia specializing in modern Chinese history. Her research and teaching interests include comparative East Asian histories, postcolonial theory, transnational studies, world history, and race and ethnic studies. Dr. Brown’s research examines networks of difference in China used to understand the Black foreign other through an investigation of the social and political context that African Americans navigated and negotiated during their time in Maoist China.

The National Committee on United States-China Relations is pleased to have selected the sixth cohort of its Public Intellectuals Program (PIP), generously funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York. The twenty fellows comprise a wide range of research interests, geographic locations, and types of institutions.