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 climate change and environmental politics in developing countries. Her book project explores how patterns of class- and race-based segregation shapes urban and distributive politics across cities in Brazil and Mexico. Her book project is based on her doctoral dissertation, which won the Mancur Olson Best Dissertation in Political Economy Award (2025), the Harold D. Lasswell Best Dissertation in Public Policy Prize (2024), and the Best Dissertation in Urban Politics Prize (2024) from the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Her other projects examine deforestation in the Amazon, urban housing markets and the causes of slum growth, the politics of gentrification, urban climate change adaptation, and informal labor in developing cities. She also has research interests in quantitative and spatial methods for studying inequality. Her research is published or forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Annual Review of Political Science.

Xu is a recipient of the Susan Clarke Young Scholar Award (2023) from the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Urban Politics Section, awarded to an emerging scholar making contributions to the study of urban and local politics. She also received the APSA Best Paper on Social and Economic Inequality award (Class and Inequality Section) in 2021, the APSA Paul A. Sabatier Best Conference Paper award (Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics Section) in 2022, and the APSA Best Paper on Urban and Local Politics award in 2023.

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.