I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan. My research investigates two topics: 1) how ordinary people overcome barriers to collective action and mobilize in autocracies, and 2) what reduces repressive activities by authoritarian states. Specifically, I examine how workers initiate strikes in industrial hubs of China, how strikes distribute in relation to government crackdowns across China, and how workers in the hinterland of China resist pressure from employers. Addressing the two theoretical questions in the context of China also leads me to study the domestic migration of workers, which disseminates the knowledge and experience of collective action and affects the cost and benefit of repressive activities for government officials. I approach these questions with a variety of methods, including formal theory, network analysis, causal inference, statistical models, and ethnography.