Joseph Torigian

Joseph Torigian is an associate professor at American University’s School of International Service and a center associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. At the Council on Foreign Relations, his work focuses on the politics of authoritarian regimes, with a specific focus on elite power struggles, civil-military relations, grand strategy, China and Russia. 

Before his time at American University and the University of Michigan, Torigian was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s history and public policy program. Prior to those positions, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton and at Harvard University’s China and the World program. He was a postdoctoral and predoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a predoctoral fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Security and Conflict Studies.  

He is the author of “Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles After Stalin and Mao” (Yale University Press, 2022) and “The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun” (Stanford University Press, 2025). Torigian holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.