Bincheng Mao is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. A Rhodes Scholar, his research interests lie at the intersection of crisis management, constitutional construction, and political risk in the twentieth century. Before his doctoral studies at Oxford, he was a Schwarzman Scholar and Bloomberg Fellow at Tsinghua University, where he completed a master of global affairs and volunteered at Tsinghua legal aid. Prior to that, he studied politics, rights, and development at New York University as a University Honors Scholar, Changemaker Fellow, and University Leadership Fellow. At Oxford, he has served on the committee of the Oxford Union, where he worked to protect freedom of speech.
DPhil topic
Bincheng’s thesis examines crisis management within twentieth-century political institutions, focusing on how systems respond when moments of high-level political uncertainty threaten routine governance. Drawing on oral-history interviews, internal materials, local records, and public sources, the project explores how officials interpreted, transmitted, and implemented sensitive decisions during periods of political disruption, and how institutional order was restored after episodes of elite instability.
