Linda is a History and Economics double major who transferred from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro (UNC-G) campus to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) at the end of her sophomore year. She has made the Dean’s List every term and will graduate with Highest Distinction. As Michael Tsin, the Earl N. Phillips Jr. Distinguished Professor in International Studies and Chinese History, writes, “Linda is a truly excellent, bright, active, focused, and deeply engaged student, and she distinguishes herself among her peers through her academic rigor, dedicated research on contemporary China, and community engagement.”
Born in the United States, Linda spent her formative years in Beijing, China and is fluent in speaking, reading, and writing Mandarin Chinese. She hopes to study contemporary Chinese society using statistical and ethnographical field research methodologies.
Linda has recently finished her Senior Honors Thesis in History, “Breach of Trust as Fuel for Protest: Tiananmen Demonstrations and The Erosion of State-Society Relations In 1980s China,” which utilizes sociological and historical research methods to study the process of erosion in state-society relations which unfolded throughout the 1980s—and how this drove the 1989 Tiananmen Square student-protestors’ usage of “Nothing to My Name” (Cui Jian) as their representative protest anthem. She was recently awarded the Frank Ryan Chancellor’s Prize for Best Honors Thesis.
Out of Yenching’s offered academic tracks, Linda chose the “Law and Society” track. She will begin her studies at the Yenching Academy in fall 2021.
In the future, Linda hopes to pursue a PhD in Sociology, with focus on the themes of state-society relations, immigration, politics of protest, and contemporary China.
