Lev Nachman

Lev Nachman is an Assistant Professor at National Taiwan University in Taiwan. Prior to this, Nachman was Assistant Professor at College of Social Science at National Chengchi University. He was previously a Fulbright Research Fellow and the Hou Family Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Taiwan Studies at the Harvard Fairbank Center.

Born in the US, Nachman received his PhD in Political Science from the University of California at Irvine (UC Irvine), and his Master’s degree from Hopkins-Nanjing in International Studies. His academic research focuses on the political participation and social protest in Taiwan, cross-strait relations and US-Taiwan relations. Through in-depth fieldwork and survey experiments, Nachman is committed to better understanding political behaviour and attitudes in Hong Kong and Taiwan. His projects have been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Stimson Center, the Jack W. Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy, and the Long US-China Institute.

Now based in Taipei, Lev Nachman speaks fluent Mandarin. He is regularly invited to provide commentary on Taiwanese domestic issues, cross-strait politics and US-Taiwan relations. Nachman is frequently quoted in the New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, the BBC and the Guardian. His Op-Eds are widely published in outlets including Foreign Policy, the Diplomat, Atlantic Council and peer-reviewed journals including Political Research Quarterly and Asian Survey.

Nachman is the co-author of A Contested Democracy Under Threat. In the book, Nachman and his co-author Jonathan Sullivan examine Taiwan’s complex and multi-layered history and the many dimensions it holds in international politics. The duo also explain the difference between the issues that dominate local and presidential elections, delivering compact insights in light of 2024’s presidential elections in Taiwan.

Lev Nachman is a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), the Atlantic Council Global China Hub and a Wilson Center China Fellow.