Elizabeth J. Perry (Chinese name: Chinese: 裴宜理; pinyin: Péi Yílǐ, born 1948) is a prominent United States scholar of Chinese politics and history in the Department of Government, Harvard University (United States) where she is Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and served recently as President of the Association for Asian Studies.
Born shortly before the communist revolution in mainland China to Episcopal missionary parents who were professors at St. John's University in Shanghai, Elizabeth Perry was raised in Tokyo, Japan on the campus of Rikkyo University (where her parents also taught). She later returned to the United States and attended Hobart and William Smith College (1966–1969). In 1978, she received a Ph.D. in political science from University of Michigan. She was an early member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars.
Perry's research focuses on popular protest and grassroots political behavior in China since approximately 1845. Her book, Shanghai on Strike: the Politics of Chinese Labor (1993) won the John King Fairbank prize from the American Historical Association.