# Zoey Ziyue Shen Graduate Affiliate ![Ziyue Shen](/sites/g/files/omnuum1371/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2026-03/Zoey%20Shen.jpg?itok=EDKi-Ur5) email Zoey Shen is a PhD candidate in Economic History at the London School of Economics. She is a member of LSE’s Financial History Group and convenes the LSE Asia Economic History Seminar. Her research brings together monetary history and political economy, with broader interests in East Asia’s institutional development and the relationship between monetary governance and state capacity. Her dissertation examines monetary decentralisation in imperial China (960–1911). While China is often portrayed as a highly centralised empire, she finds that the circulation of multiple currencies across distinct regions was a persistent feature of its history rather than an exception. Drawing on political theory and quantitative analysis, she reconceptualises monetary capacity as a cyclical and contested process shaped by ideologies, market forces, credibility constraints and configurations of authority. She holds master’s degrees from the London School of Economics and Boston University, and received her BA from the College of William & Mary.