Elizabeth J. Perry

Who is Elizabeth J. Perry?

Elizabeth J. Perry is a prominent United States scholar of Chinese politics and history in the Department of Government, Harvard University where she is Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and served recently as President of the Association for Asian Studies.

Born shortly before the communist revolution in mainland China to Episcopal missionary parents who were professors at St. John's University in Shanghai, Elizabeth Perry was raised in Tokyo, Japan on the campus of Rikkyo University. She later returned to the United States and attended Hobart and William Smith College. In 1978, she received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. She was an early member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars.

Perry's research focuses on popular protest and grassroots political behavior in China since approximately 1845. Her book, Shanghai on Strike: the Politics of Chinese Labor won the John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association.