Wenkai

HE

和文凱

Wenkai He (Ph.D., MIT, 2007), is associate professor of Social Science. Before joining the Division of Social Science of HKUST in 2008, he was An Wang postdoctoral fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. In the spring semester of 2014, he was a visiting associate professor in the Division of Social Science at California Institute of Technology. In 2016-2017, he was selected as the joint fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and Harvard-Yenching Institute. His first book, Paths toward the Modern Fiscal State: England, Japan, and China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), was the 2014 co-winner of the Barrington Moore Book Award of Comparative and Historical Sociology of the American Sociological Assocation. His second book, Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. This book was shortlisted for the J. David Greeenstone Prize for the best book in the section of Politics and History of the American Political Science Association in 2024; and for the Gregory Luebbert Book Award in the section of Comparative Politics of the American Political Science Association. He is an Associate Editor of Cambridge Studies in Historical Sociology of Cambridge University Press. His research interests include comparative historical analysis in social science, the political economy of state formation, and the political and economic history of China.