Our Team
Yawei Liu, Ph.D.
Yawei Liu, Ph.D. is the Senior Advisor on China at The Carter Center and an adjunct professor of political science at Emory University. An expert on U.S.-China relations and Chinese grassroots democracy, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the associate director of the China Research Center in Atlanta. He is regularly invited to speak about Chinese public opinion, and his previous engagements include the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Brookings Institution, the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute for China-America Studies.
Nick Zeller, Ph.D.
Nick Zeller is a senior program associate for the China Focus in the Office of the Vice President for Peace Programs and editor of the English-language U.S.-China Perception Monitor website. Prior to joining the Carter Center, Nick was a Visiting Assistant Professor of World History in Kennesaw State University’s Department of History and Philosophy, Visiting Assistant Professor of Asian History in the University of South Carolina’s Department of History, and an NSEP Boren Fellow at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He received his Ph.D. in modern Chinese history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Miranda Wilson
Miranda Wilson is a contributing editor to the U.S.-China Perception Monitor website. She is an undergraduate at Emory University, where she is Chief Editor of the Emory Journal of Asian Studies, a member of the Barkley Forum of Debate, Deliberation, and Dialogue, and a former intern for the Carter Center’s China Focus.
Michael B. Cerny
Michael B. Cerny is a research consultant in the Office of the Vice President for Peace Programs. Cerny received his Master of Philosophy in Politics (Comparative Government) from the University of Oxford, where he specialized in Chinese political economy and quantitative research methods. At The Carter Center, he manages the China Focus public opinion research projects. Cerny also advises the Peace Programs on research design and data-driven program evaluation under the Peace Programs’ Data Scientist.
Juan Zhang
Juan Zhang is the managing editor for the Chinese language U.S.-China Perception Monitor (zmyinxiang.org) and a senior writer for the English website. Before joining the Monitor, Juan was the U.S. bureau chief for dunjiaodu.com (formerly Consensus Net), a Beijing-based online portal on China’s reform and opening-up. While studying at NYU, she was a culture and education issue contributor for people.com.cn, the online portal for the People’s Daily. She served as a special advisor for the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations. Juan was a consultant in international development at the United Nations Development Programme before starting her journalism career in U.S.-China relations. Juan holds master’s degrees in international relations from Peking University and New York University. She got her bachelor’s degree from Shandong Qufu Normal University.
Jade Zhou
Jade Zhou is an intern for the Carter Center’s China Focus. She is a rising junior at Emory University majoring in Philosophy with a minor in French Studies. Zhou believes that being a scholar requires more than theorizing and seeks to apply socio-political theories in the classroom to the real, empirical world through her research and writing.