Lynette Ong, an internationally acknowledged expert on China, jointly appointed to the Department of Political Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, is the winner of the 2024 Insight Award from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC.)
The prize is one of several Impact Awards presented annually by SSHRC. Insight Award Winners are recognized for work that has made a significant contribution to knowledge and understanding about people, societies and the world.
Ong is a faculty fellow at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology & Society. She is also a past director of the China Initiative at the Munk School; acting director of the Contemporary Asian Studies program; and director of the East Asia seminar series at the Asian Institute.
A renowned scholar and expert on authoritarianism, contentious politics, and development in China, Ong has conducted on-the-ground research in the country since the late 1990s.
She has written multiple books, including 2023’s Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China. The publication won five major awards and been hailed as an essential contribution to our understanding of Chinese politics, economics and human rights. Ong has also delivered expert testimony before the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission, as well as Canada’s House of Commons special committee on Canada-China relations.
Since 2012, Ong has led a team of student researchers to build a unique dataset on social unrest in China. This dataset played a key role in providing empirical evidence for Outsourcing Repression, and has been essential for several of Ong's academic articles. She is currently working on two new projects, one on the politics of real estate and the other on the outsourcing of digital repression in China. Collaborating with colleagues and graduate students in data collection, these projects will culminate in the publication of two books, multiple academic journal articles, and other public-facing scholarship. The $50,000 Insight Award will enable her to continue this critical research.
Ong describes winning the Insight Award as a “pleasant surprise.”
“I’d like to thank the people who have helped me along the way,” she says. “As an inherently private person, I need to adjust to this public recognition. I just hope I can pay it forward and mentor other young researchers.”
“Lynette Ong’s extraordinarily courageous research has taken her to places where few others would dare to tread,” says Antoinette Handley, acting dean of Arts & Science and professor in the Department of Political Science. “Her valuable scholarship has presented Western observers with unique, ongoing insights into the political economy and workings of political repression in China. It is my pleasure to congratulate Professor Ong on her well-deserved win of this year’s SSHRC Insight Award.”