Welcome. I am a PhD candidate in Government at Harvard University, where I study social identity, political psychology, and international migration in international relations. I am on the 2025 – 2026 academic job market.

My dissertation examines how social identity determines international migration decisions and how processes of international migration shape social identities among recent migrant cohorts in turn, with consequences for foreign policy and origin-destination country relations. My job market paper focuses on the causes and consequences of “diasporic nationalism” for international politics, with cross-national observational and experimental data, text analysis, and meta-analysis. While my dissertation centers on the prominent case of China and its diaspora, my broader research agenda adopts a global perspective. In line with my general interest in the transnationalization of social identity, I pursue an additional research agenda in race and international relations.

My research has been funded by the James M. and Cathleen Stone PhD Fellowship in Inequality and Wealth Concentration, Time-sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS), the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, and the Institute for Humane Studies.

I received a MPhil in International Relations as a Clarendon Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford and a BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to my PhD, I worked for the United Nations. My public writing has appeared in the Boston Review. Outside of work, I snowboard and follow professional tennis tournaments.

I can be contacted at lucysong@fas.harvard.edu.