Steven W. Lewis is the Baker Institute’s Fellow in Asian Studies and faculty advisor for the Jesse Jones Leadership Center Summer in D.C. Policy Research Internship Program. He is also professor of the practice in humanities and director of the Asian Studies Program at Rice University. He received his doctorate in political science from Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests are focused on exploring the growth of a transnational Chinese middle class, the influence of advertisements in new public spaces in Chinese cities, the development of privatization experiments in China’s localities, and the reform of China’s energy policies, national oil companies, and international energy relations.

Lewis has been head of the Transnational China Project at the Baker Institute since 1997. He has also served as the organizing researcher of the Northeast Asia Energy Cooperation Workshops, a series of academic meetings held to discuss energy, energy security, and environmental policy coordination between the United States, Japan, and China, and co-sponsored by the Baker Institute’s Energy Forum, the Institute for Energy Economics, Japan, the UFJ Research Institute, the Shanghai Academy of Social Science, and Horizon Survey Research of China. He has also conducted studies, research, and given briefings for the following organizations: the National Bureau of Asian Research; the Center for International Political Economy; Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry; the Sichuan Petroleum Administration as part of a World Bank training program; and the World Petrochemical Congress. Lewis is widely published and a frequent commentator on Chinese affairs for U.S., Chinese, and foreign media. He is also chairman of the programming committee of the board of advisors of the Asia Society of Texas, a member of the Houston Council on Foreign Relations, and an academic advisor to the U.S.–China Working Group of the U.S. House of Representatives.