Professor Meng’s research is concerned with how institutional forces shape media and communication, and how communicative activities and digital technologies are implicated in the formation of culture, identity and political engagement. Focusing on China as her main empirical site, she aims to advance related academic debates by historicising and retheorising state-market and state-society relations in non-liberal contexts through the lens of media and communication. Drawing insights from multiple disciplines and fields, she critiques the universalist claims often made in the mainstream of social science disciplines, while being vigilant against the lingering ideological legacy of the Cold War in area studies. Thematically speaking, Professor Meng’s research examines 1) various forms of political communication, with particular attention paid to the dynamic role of the state; 2) mediated gender roles, motherhood and varieties of feminism; 3) the politics of digital technologies and the political economy of the digital communication industries.