Alice Xu, PhD

Alice Xu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice and the Department of Political Science (secondary appointment). She studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on the politics of inequality and social policy, urban and distributive politics, and environmental politics in the Global South. Her book project explores how patterns of class- and race-based segregation shapes urban and distributive politics across cities in Brazil and Mexico. She also has research interests in quantitative and spatial methods for studying inequality. Her research received the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Best Paper on Social and Economic Inequality award (Class and Inequality Section) in 2021 and APSA’s Paul A. Sabatier Best Conference Paper award (Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics Section) in 2022. She is also the 2023 recipient of the Susan Clarke Young Scholar Award from the APSA Urban Politics Section. Xu received a PhD in Government (Political Science) with distinction from Harvard University in 2023 and a BA in Economics-Political Science and Sustainable Development from Columbia University. She was previously a Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy.