Berkley Center

Becky Yang Hsu is an associate professor of sociology and senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, where she is also affiliated with the Asian Studies Program. She directed a research group on the topic of Culture and Society as part of the Georgetown University Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues. She is the author of Borrowing Together: Microfinance and Cultivating Social Ties (Cambridge University Press, 2017), co-editor, with Richard Madsen, of The Chinese Pursuit of Happiness: Anxieties, Hopes, and Moral Tensions in Everyday Life (University of California Press, 2019), and editor of The Extraordinary in the Mundane: Family and Forms of Community in China (Columbia University Press, 2025). Hsu is currently writing a book on the link between mourning, family rituals, and happiness in China. She was project leader (PI) of a John Templeton Foundation funded project, "The Concept of Fu in Contemporary China: Searching for Well-Being, Purpose, and the Good Life" (2013-2016). The Washington Post featured two videos from her fieldwork ("What People around the world mean when they say they’re happy,” February 3, 2016). She is on the editorial boards of two journals, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and Social Science and Medicine—Mental Health. She holds a B.A. from Yale University, and an M.A. and Ph.D.from Princeton University.