Her research is motivated by a desire to understand the political economy of South-South economic engagement, with a focus on China's foreign economic relations, Chinese foreign aid, foreign direct investment, and infrastructure contracts. More broadly, she is interested in combining quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how history influences contemporary political economy and international relations, and in how political and sociological factors affect prospects for economic development. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include global governance, political economy of institutions, and China and the Global South.
She has had papers published in leading academic journals including International Studies Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, the Journal of Chinese Political Science, and Asian Perspective, and has served on the editorial team of the Chinese Political Science Review since 2015.
Morgan has a B.A. in economics and politics from Durham University, an M.Sc. in Asian politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and a Ph.D. from Fudan University. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was a Global Perspectives on Society Fellow at New York University Shanghai.