Samantha Vortherms

Samantha Vortherms joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia for the 2017-2018 academic year. Before her fellowship, she obtained her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Her research focuses on comparative political economy, development, social welfare, and research methodology. Her dissertation examines subnational variation in access to citizenship rights in China through the household registration system. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education through the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad, and the Social Science Research Council's Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, among others.

At Stanford, Sam will work on converting her dissertation to a book manuscript and advance her post-dissertation project on the role of the firm in labor migration policies. Before going to Wisconsin, Sam received her M.A. in International Relations at the University of Chicago, A.M. in Public Policy from University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, and a B.A. from the University of Richmond.  From 2014-2016, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the National School of Development's China Center for Health Economics Research at Peking University.