Rachel Ann Hulvey

Rachel Ann Hulvey is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. Her research focuses on China’s influence on international order with an empirical focus on cyberspace.

Rachel Hulvey researches soft power, cyber governance, and Chinese foreign policy. She graduated with a PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 2024 and remains an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Columbia China and the World and Harvard Belfer Center International Security programs. At Indiana University, she is an affiliated faculty member of the Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center.

Explaining changes in international order is one of the most important and enduring topics of international relations (Waltz 1979; Wendt 1999). Her book project, Discourse Power: How China Gains Global Influence, takes up this task by examining China’s rise and influence on world order. How does China attempt to impact international order, and what strategies does it pursue to gain influence? Given these strategies, when is China successful?

As China rises, nowhere is great power competition for developing international order more active than cyberspace. But rather than the contest for control playing out on the battlefield, great powers compete to mobilize support in a competition about whose story wins. To attract support for developing new rules and institutions among United Nations members, President Xi Jinping directs officials to cultivate “discourse power” (话语权) on the world stage. Such investments in discourse power include a focus on crafting a compelling message. China strategically draws from sovereignty – a widely held and foundational value of statehood – to attract followers for China’s vision of order in cyberspace. 

Rachel is a recipient of the American Political Science Foundation’s Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (2021-2023) and the Foreign Language Area Studies Award for Mandarin and East Asian study (2021-2022). Her research benefits from generous support from the University of Pennsylvania’s Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics and the Center for the Study of Contemporary China. She was a Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow (2019-2022), a Schmidt Futures International Strategy Forum Fellow (2022-2023), and a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow with the Notre Dame International Security Center (2024-2025). She is currently a non-resident fellow at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.