Zihan Zhang

Research Interests

Political Sociology, Race, Ethnicity, & Migration, Science, Knowledge, & Technology, Qualitative Methodology, Chinese Society

Biographical Note

Zihan (Steven) Zhang is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. His research lies at the intersection of political sociology, immigration, race and ethnicity. He is particularly interested in how people’s political identities are relationally produced through both offline organizing and social media. His current research focuses on Chinese immigrant communities in the United States as well as changing state-society relations in China during and after COVID-19.

Education

Zihan received his M.A. in East Asian Regional Studies from Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute in 2026 and his B.A. in Political Science from Fudan University in 2025.