About

I am an Academia Sinica Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica (IPSAS) in Taiwan.

Previously (2023-2025), I was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Quantitative Theory and Methods at Emory University.

My research examines crime and conflict: why violence rises or falls, and how it shapes political behavior and institutions.  This includes: (1) how resource booms and economic shocks shift incentives for violence, (2) how crime and threat perceptions shape democratic attitudes and voting, and (3) the dynamics of state-crime collusion.

Across these questions, I combine formal modeling with quantitative methods, drawing on cases from both developing and developed countries.

Extending this agenda, I also study applied political economy questions — including how housing policy shapes immigrant settlement, and how foreign investment affects disaster recovery.

I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Vanderbilt University in 2023 and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Sogang University, South Korea, in 2017.