People

About:

Junchao Tang is a PhD student in sociology and scientific computing at the University of Michigan and a trainee of the Population Studies Center. He is also a student affiliate of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies and the Center of Inequality Dynamics at U-M.

Growing up in Shanghai, China, Junchao got his B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from Fudan University. He also received an M.A. in Regional Studies – East Asia from Harvard before his move to Ann Arbor.

Junchao’s research interests lie in the intersection of inequality, social stratification, political sociology, and economic sociology, with a regional focus on contemporary China. His past research explored the patterns of educational inequality in China and investigated how the Chinese government responds to distributive demands from homogenous communities. During his graduate study at U-M, he plans to examine how the formation and consequence of changing class structures under authoritarianism using China as a case.

An ISR Next Generation Scholar, Junchao received the 2024 Rosemary Sarri Family Fellowship Young Researcher Award Fund for his project, “Boarding, Schooling and the Academic Achievement Gap.” He received a Marshall Weinberg Fellowship for “Population Census, State Legibility, and Politics of Data in China.”

Junchao has been a proud supporter of Real Madrid for over ten years. Besides watching La Liga and European Championship League, he enjoys anime and console gaming, during the time he not wrestling with sociological tomes or programming bugs.