Edward S. Steinfeld is Professor of Political Science and the Dean's Chair in China Studies at Brown University. From 2016 to 2024, Steinfeld served as director of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He is the founding dean of Brown University’s School for International and Public Affairs.
Steinfeld’s research focuses on understanding China's contemporary industrial transformation and its implications for national power and technological competitiveness. Through deep and long-term interactions with Chinese and global companies, Steinfeld examines the relationship between governmental industrial policy and enterprise-level technological capabilities, as well as efforts at knowledge generation by Chinese firms operating in worldwide production and R&D networks. His work documents the flow of technical knowledge and know-how both into China and out from China, and examines the political, social, and geopolitical ramifications of these interactions.
Steinfeld is the author of the books Playing Our Game: Why China's Rise Doesn't Threaten the West (Oxford, 2010) and Forging Reform in China: The Fate of State-Owned Industry (Cambridge, 1998). He has authored numerous articles in both academic and non-academic journals, including Comparative Politics, Political Studies, World Development, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.
Steinfeld received his BA, MA, and PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, where he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Prior to Brown, Steinfeld from 1996 through 2013 served on the faculty of the Sloan School of Management and Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
