Research Team

Principle Investigator

Jacob Richard Thomas is an American Assistant Professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest's Department of Sociology and a Research Fellow at Princeton University's Center on Migration and Development. He received a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies field major at UC Berkeley, specializing in globalization, a Master’s degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. from the University of California Los Angeles’ Sociology Department. He worked for one year as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University’s Center on Contemporary China. He has published in the European Journal of Sociology, International Journal of Sociology, International Migration, Theory and Society, and other venues. He is interested in comparative migration policies, international migration and travel, race and ethnicity, social networks, multi-method research, and U.S.-China relations.

Research Assistant

Yawei (Gloria) Duan (she/they) is an MPhil student in the Gender Studies Programme affiliated with the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include LGBTQ+ communities, sex work, masculinity discourse, social movements in Mainland and Hong Kong, and neurodiversity/disability studies.

Research Assistant

Yiran Yu is an incoming Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she hopes to study Asian diaspora and skill-based migration. She received her master’s degree with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and her bachelor’s degree from Boston University.