I am a Senior Lecturer (full-time faculty) with the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University. I received my PhD in Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2022. My research interests focus on authoritarian nostalgia and related political behavior in post-authoritarian democracies. My regional focus is on South Korea and other Asian democracies. My book project investigates why individual voters feel nostalgic for an authoritarian past and vote for political parties that are linked to the past. My research has appeared in Party Politics and is forthcoming at the Journal of East Asian Studies.

My current book project, The Past that Binds, provides theoretical and empirical foundations for nostalgic behavior and democratic development, systemically reporting and analyzing the impacts of the sentimental longing for an authoritarian past. I argue that authoritarian nostalgia is an important source of group sentiment in post-authoritarian democracies, which produces large and surprising effects on voter attitudes and behaviors. Voters who share favorable views of the past may construct heightened social identity connected to the past, exhibit strong group sentiment based on historical perception, and express attachment towards authoritarian successors. As a form of social identity, such stronger political attachment can exert greater impacts on political behavior more than ideological or programmatic appeals do.

My research has received support from various sources, including a Taiwan Fellowship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan, a Doctoral Fellowship from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, and multiple institutions at the University of Illinois, including Ferber & Sudman Dissertation Awards for Survey Research, a Nelle M. Signor Graduate Scholarship in International Relations, and a CEAPS Graduate Student Dissertation Travel Grant from the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies.