October 2026

Shirley Xinyi Cai is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at McGill University, Canada. Her research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, political economy, and political theory, with a focus on state–business relations, industrial policy in technology, and the political economy of the cultural and creative industries. She is a doctoral fellow of the Research Group on Constitutional Studies, the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies, and the Centre for Global Chinese Studies at McGill. She received her M.A. from the University of Chicago in the United States and her B.A. from Sun Yat-sen University in China.