Dr Ting Luo PhD, SFHEA

Dr Ting Luo

Department of Public Administration and Policy
Associate Professor in Government and Artificial Intelligence

Contact details

Address
School of Government
University 麻豆精选
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Ting Luo is an Associate Professor in Government and Artificial Intelligence at the University 麻豆精选. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology and governance, with a particular emphasis on digital governance and AI governance.

Qualifications

PhD in Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2014

PgCert in Higher Education, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2012

MSc in Public Policy and Administration, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2007

B.A. in Political Science, Nankai University, 2006

Membership of professional bodies: 

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2024

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2012

Biography

Ting’s research focuses on digital governance and policy, particularly on how digital development shape politics and governance. Although her empirical work centres on China, she situates these findings within a broader comparative framework to draw insights relevant to global contexts. Her methodological approach is diverse, integrating both traditional social science techniques, such as surveys and experiments, and advanced computational social science methods, including machine learning and quantitative text analysis. Ting’s work has received funding support from esteemed institutions, including the European Research Council, the British Academy, UKRI and the National Institute for Health Research.

Prior to joining the University 麻豆精选, Ting was a senior lecturer in Political Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University, a post-doctoral fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin and Leiden University in the Netherlands.  She holds a PhD in government and a Master of Science in public policy and administration from LSE. 

Teaching

Government and Politics of AI (module leader)

AI & Sustainable Development (module leader)

Research

Research Projects 

2021-2023: PI, Fandom Culture and Rhetoric Online: The Self-motivated Nationalism in Authoritarian Regimes, BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants, £9,886.

This project explores the relationship between fandom and the state in authoritarian regimes where power distribution is highly imbalanced, and political participation is constrained within the political boundaries set by the state. Little has been written about the political agency of fan communities, yet there is ample evidence of fan communities becoming politically mobilized and engaged. This project takes the fan groups in China as an example and investigates how their agencies—as a group and as individuals—shape their interaction with the state. We specifically examine their actions and nationalist activities during the Covid-19 pandemic, a time of heightened nationalist discourse in response to an external threat. This study sheds new lights on contemporary modes of political participation and the role of digital technology in shaping state-society relationships in authoritarian regimes. 

2020-2021: Co-I, COVID-19: Understanding Chinese Government Containment Measures and Their Societal Impacts, UKRI & NIHR, £334,000, PI: Jane Duckett.

The Chinese authorities have implemented a wide range of often stringent measures to tackle the Covid-19 epidemic. This project examines those measures and their societal impacts, providing insights that can assist other governments in developing responses to the pandemic that are effective, ethical, and humanitarian. 

2014-2019: Post-doctoral Fellow, Authoritarianism 2.0: The Internet, Political Discussion, and Authoritarian Rule in China, ERC, €1,500,000, PI: Daniela Stockmann.

Relying on both conventional social science methods and digital methods, the project explores why social media mobilise people to voice opinions and to act both online and offline in the context of authoritarian China. The focus is on how Chinese citizens use the Internet. Central to this project is the first nationally representative survey on Internet use in China, conducted in 2018 using GPS sampling (for more information, please refer to ), along with a forthcoming book by Cambridge University Press. This research challenges the prevailing democracy-centered perspective in the study of digital governance in authoritarian regimes. The book introduces a novel digital governance model–popular corporatism–to comprehensively understand China's approach to digital governance. As one reviewer noted, "It is a timely contribution to the fast-growing scholarship on Chinese politics and governance in the Big Data era."

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Stockmann, D & Luo, T 2025, . Communication, Society and Politics , Cambridge University Press.

Article

Stockmann, D & Luo, T 2024, '', China Quarterly.

Wang, Y & Luo, T 2023, '', Information Communication and Society, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 304-320.

Lv, A, Luo, T & Duckett, J 2022, '', Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 411-427.

Stockmann, D, Luo, T & Shen, M 2020, '', Democratization, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 243-264.

Stockmann, D, Hartman, K & Luo, T 2020, '', Social Networks, vol. 63, pp. 70-79.

Stockmann, D, Garten, F & Luo, T 2020, '', First Monday, vol. 25, no. 8.

LV, AOFEI & LUO, T 2018, '', International Journal of Communication, vol. 12, pp. 3877-3895.

Luo, T 2018, '', Democratization, vol. 25, no. 7, pp. 1291-1309.

Stockmann, D & Luo, T 2017, '', Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 64, no. 3-4, pp. 189-202.

Chapter

Stockmann, D & Luo, T 2024, . in DC Lynch & S Rosen (eds), Chinese Politics: The Xi Jinping Difference. 2nd edn, Routledge, pp. 83-104.

Luo, T & Lv, A 2021, . in B Haggart, N Tusikov & JA Scholte (eds), Power and Authority in Internet Governance: Return of the State?. 1st edn, Routledge Global Cooperation Series, Routledge, pp. 123-146.

Stockmann, D & Luo, T 2019, . in MXD Carpini (ed.), Digital Media and Democratic Futures. University of Pennsylvania Press, Pennsylvania, pp. 169-195.

Review article

Luo, T 2018, '', Democratization, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 574-576.

Luo, T 2012, '', Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 469-471.