Mary Gallagher

Mary E. Gallagher is the Amy and Alan Lowenstein Professor of Democracy, Democratization, and Human Rights Professor at the University of Michigan, where she is also the Director of the International Institute. She was the Director of the Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies from 2008 to 2020. Gallagher’s most recent book is Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2017). She is also the author or editor of several other books, including Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (Princeton, 2005). Gallagher was a foreign student in China in the fall of 1989 at Nanjing University at the Duke-in-China Program. She taught at Foreign Affairs College in Beijing from 1996 to 1997 as a member of the Princeton-in-Asia program. In 2023-2025, Gallagher is a Fulbright Global Scholar on a new research project that examines attitudes toward China in the United States, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. In addition to her academic research, she has consulted with governments, international organizations, and corporations on China’s domestic politics, labor and workplace conditions, and urbanization policies. She received her Ph.D. in Politics in 2001 from Princeton University and her B.A. from Smith College in 1991.