Joonbum Bae

Joonbum Bae is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA and previously held positions at the Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs (Texas A&M University), Colgate University, and the KDI School of Public Policy and Management. His research examines how the international environment shapes political behavior—from public opinion to authoritarian regime behavior and patterns of international cooperation. He has published in Public Opinion Quarterly, Review of International Studies, Journal of Global Security Studies, International Interactions, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Armed Forces and Society, and Foreign Affairs online. His work has been supported by the George Marshall Foundation, the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, and the Academy of Korean Studies.
 

Soohyun Cho

Soohyun Cho is an Assistant Professor of Government and Legal Studies at Bowdoin College. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2023 from Ohio State University. Her research examines how global economic integration reshapes domestic labor markets, political identities, and firm behavior. She focuses on how exposure to globalization generates economic insecurity and how that insecurity translates into political preferences and policy responses. She earned her B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from Seoul National University, South Korea. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright Fellowship, the Presidential Fellow at OSU, and other grants including the APSA Centennial Center Research Grant and the APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (NSF).
 

JinAeng Choi

JinAeng Choi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Georgetown University. She is a literary scholar who brings fresh critical attention to Korean and Korean–Latin American literary traditions, creating space for more inclusive approaches to literature through her research and teaching. Her work examines how border crossing narratives—intimately tied to migration and translation—disrupt monolingual and national paradigms, opening up opportunities to envision alternative genealogies of world literature. Choi is currently completing her first monograph on the literature of Korean Latin American communities in the Southern Cone from the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuries, exploring linguistic negotiations and politics of cultural exchange. She holds a Ph.D. in Asian Languages and Cultures from UCLA (2023), an M.A. in Hispanic Languages and Literature from Stony Brook University (2015), and another M.A. in Spanish Literature from Korea University (2013), and dual B.A.s in Spanish Literature and Media Studies from Korea University (2011).
 

Jenna Gibson

Jenna Gibson is the Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate at the O’Brien Notre Dame International Security Center (ONDISC). She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2025. Her dissertation, titled “Unpacking Diplospeak: Diplomatic Rhetoric and Communication in International Relations,” examines the production and dissemination of diplomatic rhetoric, and how the words that diplomats choose can facilitate communication between states. Her research interests include: diplomatic rhetoric, public and cultural diplomacy, soft power, South Korean politics and social issues, and U.S.-Korea relations. In 2022-23, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to South Korea to conduct field work for her dissertation. Her research has been featured in the peer-reviewed publications Media, War, & Conflict, Asian Journal of Social Science, and Asian Survey. She previously lived for two years in Cheonan, South Korea as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. She earned a Master of Science in Foreign Service degree from Georgetown University in 2015, and a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2011.
 

Eun Jo

Eun A Jo is an Assistant Professor of Government at William & Mary. Previously, she was a David and Cindy Edelson Fellow in International Security at the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. She received her Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University in 2024. She studies how stories, memories, and ideologies stemming from critical junctures—such as decolonization, democratization, and autocratization—shape international relations, with a focus on Northeast Asia. Her work is published or accepted in American Political Science Review, Asian Survey, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, and International Security. This research has been recognized with over a dozen awards, including the Nuno P. Monteiro Best Dissertation Award in International Relations Theory, Best Dissertation Award in Nationalism and Politics, the Catherine McArdle Kelleher Best Article Award in International Security, and the Alexander L. George Best Article Award in Qualitative and Multi-Method Research from the American Political Science Association. Occasionally, she writes commentaries on contemporary policy issues. Her writings have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, and The Diplomat.
 

Jenny Jun

Jenny Jun is an Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She also serves as Non-resident Fellow on the CyberAI Project at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where she was previously a Research Fellow. Her academic research focuses on explaining the dynamics of coercion and signaling in cyberspace using formal models. Her policy research focuses on North Korea’s cyber operations. She has testified before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on the implications of North Korea’s cyber threat and is a co-author of the 2015 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report North Korea’s Cyber Operations: Strategy and Responses. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and received her M.A. and B.S. each from the Security Studies Program (SSP) and the School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University.
 

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Texas. His primary research focuses on authoritarian nostalgia and how it shapes voter behavior in post-authoritarian democracies. Her further develops research projects in the intersection of domestic and international politics of China’s expansion in Asia. His regional focus is on East Asian and Southeast Asian democracies, including South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. He introduces various research methods in answering key research questions, including text and image analysis and experiments. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2022 and MA and BA at Korea University. Before joining UNT, he was a Senior Lecturer and Assistant Director of the Data Analytics and Policy Program and a faculty affiliate in the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. His research has appeared in Political Behavior, Democratization, Comparative Politics, Party Politics, and World Development, among others.
 

Peter Banseok Kwon

Peter Banseok Kwon is associate professor of strategy, statecraft, and political economy in the School of Civic Leadership at The University of Texas at Austin. A historian with interdisciplinary training, his research examines the interplay of militarization, modernization, state-building, nationalism, and civil–military relations in Korea, East Asia, and in comparative global perspective. His work focuses especially on how states mobilize institutions, industry, and political authority in pursuit of security, development, and sovereign capacity. Kwon has served as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar and visiting professor at Korea National Defense University, a Soon Young Kim Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, and a visiting scholar at Yonsei University, Seoul National University, and the Academy of Korean Studies. He is the author of Cornerstone of the Nation: The Defense Industry and the Building of Modern Korea under Park Chung Hee (Harvard University Asia Center, 2024), which examines the origins and development of South Korea’s defense industry during Park Chung Hee’s rule and its impact on the nation’s socio-economic and military transformation. His research has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Academy of Korean Studies, the Association for Asian Studies, the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies program, and the Korea Institute at Harvard University.
 

YuJung Julia Lee

YuJung Julia Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University. She is also a faculty member in International Studies. Lee's research interests are in the politics of development, issues in women and politics, and Asian politics. Her current work centers on the governance of basic services, such as water, sanitation, and energy in India. She also does research on the gender gap in South Korean public opinion on foreign policies. Prior to coming to CSU, she taught at Texas A&M University and Case Western Reserve University. Her research has appeared in Sustainable Development, Development in Practice, Journal of Global Security Studies, Urban Studies and Comparative Politics. She received her Ph.D. in political science from UCLA in 2015. She holds a Master's degree in International Studies from Yonsei University and B.A. in international studies from Ewha Womans University.
 

Noelle Troutman

Noelle Troutman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Public Affairs and Service at the University of Northern Iowa and received her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2023 from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is a former 2023-2025 Security and Defence PLuS (S&D+) Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on the U.S. alliance network in Asia, specifically the U.S.-ROK alliance. Her current research reevaluates themes of abandonment, entrapment, and entanglement and argues that weaker allies can leverage their own vulnerability to compel their stronger partner for assurance. Her coauthored work has been published or is forthcoming in Asian Survey and in AUKUS and Maritime Security in an Era of Strategic Competition: Deterrence, Technology, and Ethics (Manchester University Press), edited by Sarah Tzinieris, Craig Stockings, and Thorin M. Wright. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and was previously a 2021-2023 U.S.-Asia Grand Strategy Predoctoral Fellow at the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California and Summer Research Associate and Research Adjunct in the Defense and Political Science Division at the RAND Corporation.