Ya-Wen Lei

Class of Fall 2026

Professor of Sociology

Harvard University

Geopolitical Transplants: States, Firms, and the New Global Struggle for Technology

At the Academy, Lei is investigating geopolitical transplantation—a new form of cross-border industrial relocation driven primarily by national security imperatives and the pursuit of technological self-reliance, rather than by market forces. Her project focuses on semiconductor manufacturing, a sector globally dominated by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and arguably one of the most strategically important industries of the twenty-first century. Lei’s investigation analyzes how states and firms navigate the complex challenges of strategic technology transfer amid intensifying geopolitical rivalry. Through comparative studies in the United States, Japan, and Germany, the project considers how host governments and firms address institutional mismatches, infrastructural constraints, and cultural-organizational dissonance. Being in residence in Berlin allows Lei to engage with German policymakers, industry experts, and scholars working on European industrial strategy, labor, and technology, and to facilitate fieldwork related to development in Dresden and Germany’s semiconductor ecosystem.

Ya-Wen Lei is a professor of sociology at Harvard University. She received a LLB from the College of Law at National Taiwan University and holds both a LLM and a JSD from Yale University as well as a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan. Prior to her appointment at Harvard, Lei was a Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows and a visiting professor at Sciences Po, Centre d’etudes Europeennes and Centre de recherches internationals. Lei’s research interests encompass a variety of fields, including political sociology, sociology of media and information technologies, law and society, sociology of work and labor, development, economic sociology, science and technology studies, and China studies. She is the author of The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China (Princeton, 2018) and The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China (Princeton, 2023). Her publications have received wide acclaim, including the 2025 Alice Amsden Award from the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), the 2024 Asia/Transnational Book Award from the Asia and Asian America (AAAS) Section of the American Sociological Association, and the 2024 Walter Channing Cabot Fellowships from Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recognizing its contribution to advancing scholarship in literature, history, and the arts. In 2021, Lei received the George Kahrl Award in Sociology for her outstanding contributions to undergraduate instruction at Harvard University.