P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

NEYSUN A. MAHBOUBI is a Research Scholar of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania.

Neysun is a 1997 graduate of Princeton University, where he majored in politics, learned Chinese, and won the highest departmental prize for his senior thesis on Chinese administrative law. He also served as class president and Honor Committee chair. He completed his JD in 2001 at Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

After graduating from law school, Neysun clerked for the Hon. Douglas P. Woodlock of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He then served as a trial attorney for the Federal Programs Branch of the US Department of Justice. He also has been a fellow of the China Law Center, and Tutor in Law, at Yale Law School, and has taught at Penn Carey Law School, Princeton University's School of Public & International Affairs, the University of Connecticut School of Law, and Yale Law School. He frequently comments on Chinese law and policy developments and U.S.-China relations for various media outlets. At the University of Pennsylvania, he hosts the Center for the Study of Contemporary China’s podcast, and is one of the project leaders for the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations. He also hosts the Law & Governance series, co-sponsored by the Penn Program on Regulation. 

Neysun is a member of the Baha'i­ Faith, and his parents immigrated to the United States from Iran in the 1970s.