Jingran Yang is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas.

Her research spans political economy, comparative politics, and American politics. Her most recent work in political economy has formally examined how informal networks and competition intensity interactively lead to divergence in economic performance. In comparative politics, she focuses on the social, political, and economic micro-foundations driving political regime transitions and social stability, using methodological approaches such as game theory, the principal-agent model, and causal inference with the application of machine learning. In American politics, she is particularly interested in experimental studies on the causes of political polarization. 

Before pursuing her Ph.D. in Political Science at KU, Yang earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Renmin University of China in Beijing. Her early research focused on the mechanisms of personnel promotion within local Chinese governments. 

Yang is the cofounder of Meen Community(咪音社), a WeChat Official Account dedicated to promoting music diversity in Mainland China.