Elizabeth J. Perry is a scholar of Chinese politics and history, currently the Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Her scholarship explores the deep histories of the Chinese revolution and their implications for contemporary Chinese politics. Her more recent intellectual interventions include Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China (Harvard, 2011); Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition (California, 2012); What is the Best Kind of History? [什么是最好的历史学] (Zhejiang, 2015); Beyond Regimes: China and India Compared (Harvard, 2018); Similar yet Different: Case Studies of China’s Modern Christian Colleges [异同之间：中国近代教会大学个案研究] (Zhejiang, 2019); and Ruling by Other Means: State-Mobilized Movements (Cambridge, 2020).

Her other works on the past and legacy of the Chinese revolution, theory and practice of political economy, and the lived experiences of social transformations in modern China include Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945 (Stanford, 1980), Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China (M.E. Sharpe, 2002), Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship and the Chinese State (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), "Reclaiming the Chinese Revolution" (Journal of Asian Studies 67(4): 1147-1164), “Teaching Chinese Politics in Comparative Perspective” (The PRC History Review, 4.2). Recently, she has also been working on "work teams" (工作队) as a sinicised governance practice in revolutionary China. 

Perry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and a former President of the Association for Asian Studies (2007) & Director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies (1999-2003). Her book, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford, 1993) received the John King Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association; her article, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’: From Mencius to Mao – and Now” (Perspectives on Politics, 2008) received the Heinz I. Eulau Prize of the American Political Science Association.

A formidable voice for the importance of studying the tradition of Chinese politics, Perry has given her thoughts on The Resilience of Chinese Communism: Lessons From History (Emory University), The Cultural Foundations of Chinese Communism (India-China Institute), why study Chinese politics & society (Yenching Academy, Peking University), Asian Studies in Asia, and her introduction to a panel on Civil Society in East Asia (Harvard-Yenching Institute).