Welcome! 

I am a political theorist and intellectual historian, and I will begin as an Early-Career Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge in October 2026. 

My research centers on the relationship between democratic thought and the postcolonial state. I draw on the history of postcolonial political thought in Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Malaya/Malaysia, and Singapore – to examine how core democratic concepts have been defined to justify the building of strong, centralized states and the constraining of dissent. I read practical political actors, especially politicians and civil servants, for what they tell us about the relationship between politics and political thought. 

I co-organize the Association for Global Political Thought, an organization working out of Harvard University and the American University in DC, with more than 100 research affiliates across the world. 

You can call me by my two-word first name, YI NING. The family name is CHANG.