Interim Director

Kyle A. Jaros was named interim director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, one of nine constituent institutes and centers at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, effective July 1, 2026.

Jaros, associate professor in the Keough School of Global Affairs, holds a concurrent appointment in political science within the College of Arts & Letters. He was a faculty fellow of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies prior to taking on his current role and remains a faculty fellow at the Keough School's Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

As interim director, Jaros leads the Liu Institute in its mission to support education, research, and outreach on Asia and its diaspora by organizing degree programs, funding initiatives, public events, and facilitating interactions and exchanges with partners in Asia.

Jaros researches the politics of urban and regional development, intergovernmental relations, and subnational foreign affairs with a focus on China. His first book, “China’s Urban Champions: The Politics of Spatial Development” (Princeton University Press, 2019), examines the policy logics and political factors driving uneven development in China’s provinces. He is currently completing a co-authored book manuscript on state and local US-China relations, tentatively titled “Subnational Statecraft: How States and Cities Make and Break US-China Relations.”

Jaros holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the Department of Government at Harvard University and an A.B. in public and international affairs and a certificate in Chinese language and culture from Princeton University. He also holds a graduate certificate in Chinese studies from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies.

Before joining the University of Notre Dame in 2020, Jaros was associate professor in the political economy of China at the University of Oxford’s School of Global and Area Studies and previously held a China public policy postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program, a former Visiting Senior Fellow for U.S.-China Subnational Relations at the Truman Center (2024), and a former Wilson China Fellow (2022-2023). Jaros is also a member of the editorial boards of Urban Affairs Review and Studies in Comparative International Development.