Please join us in congratulating this year’s LISD Senior Thesis Award winners — Cassandra Eng ’25 and Vincent Jiang ’25, both seniors in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Vincent also served as a member of the 2023–2024 cohort of LISD’s International Policy Associates (IPAs) and is an ROTC cadet. Their exceptional theses explore themes on self-determination of nations, groups, and individuals in international politics.­

Cassandra Eng ’25

Thesis: Undivided Despite Design: Uplifting the Voice and Power of Residents in Philippine Informal Settlements and South African Townships

Advisor: Carol Martin, Lecturer of Public and International Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

Eng’s thesis reframes poverty not just as an economic condition, but as a deprivation of political voice, civic recognition, and access to institutional power. Her central question asks: “How does spatial segregation influence avenues and aspirations for civic participation among the urban poor?” Eng partnered with three NGOs to conduct international fieldwork: Project PEARLS in the Philippines and Township Roots and Starting Chance in South Africa. The Philippines and South Africa serve as insightful case studies into the role democracies play in empowering their citizens—and the consequences when that role is unfulfilled. Grounding her analysis in the lived expertise of residents from informal settlements in Tondo, Manila, and townships in the Cape Flats, Cape Town, she argues that the primary barrier to full democratic participation in spatially segregated communities is a diminished sense of personal power and voice. The thesis concludes with eight community-sourced policy recommendations aimed at amplifying residents’ civic agency.

Vincent Jiang ’25

Thesis: Forbidding the Palace Coup: An Analysis of Promotions and Purges in the People’s Liberation Army

Advisor: Rory Truex, Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

Jiang’s thesis explores the coup-proofing strategies employed by the civilian leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to maintain their control over the People’s Liberation Army. Jiang augmented and analyzed a dataset of over 800 PLA officers promoted to O-9 grade and above since 1949, drawing from Chinese-language news articles, biographies, and obituaries to exhaustively document historical and contemporary political purges. He concludes that Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping have pursued coup-proofing strategies that favored loyalty over competence, while the other paramount leaders of the People’s Republic of China were unwilling or unable to make that tradeoff. These findings have salient implications for theories of civil-military relations and assessments of the PLA’s military readiness.

LISD Director Andrew Moravcsik and Executive Director Nadia Crisan hosted the award ceremony in the presence of our two winners, faculty thesis advisors and family.

Congratulations to our outstanding 2025 awardees!