Mary E. Gallagher, Amy and Alan Lowenstein Professor in Democracy, Democratization, and Human Rights in the Department of Political Science, has been appointed as the director of the International Institute. Professor Gallagher is a specialist in Chinese politics, comparative politics of transitional and developing states, and law and society. She enters this role with a deep familiarity with the II, having been director of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies since 2008. Professor Gallagher will lead the International Institute as director from July 1, 2020, through June 30, 2025.

Professor Gallagher received her Ph.D. in politics in 2001 from Princeton University and her B.A. from Smith College in 1991. She was a foreign student in China in 1989 at Nanjing University. She also taught at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing from 1996-97. She was a Fulbright Research Scholar from 2003-04 at East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai, China. In 2012-13, she was a visiting professor at the Koguan School of Law at Shanghai Jiaotong University. 

Professor Gallagher is an expert in Chinese politics, law and society, and labor politics. Her most recent book is Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers and the State, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. She is also the author or editor of several other books, including Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (Princeton 2005); Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China (Cambridge 2011); From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization:  Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China (Cornell 2011); and Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies (Cambridge 2010). She is the author of many articles in academic and non-academic publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Comparative Political Studies, and World Politics. She is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations and has consulted for the World Bank, the US State Department and Department of Labor, and many other NGOs and international organizations.