Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica

Hyemin Jamie Ko is received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University. Her doctoral dissertation examines how professional and political credentials interact to structure the political mobility of SOE executives across strategic industries and the Chinese party-state, highlighting the politicization of technical expertise under intensified state-led technological development. Her research primarily focuses on CCP elite politics, technocracy, and state–industry relations in contemporary China, with particular attention to political mobility among CCP cadres. More specifically, her research explores authoritarian governance and industrial policy through examining how technocrats are politically incorporated within party-state apparatus. At Academia Sinica, Dr. Ko has expanded her research agenda beyond elite mobility to explore strategic industries, military-industrial governance, and the political economy of technological competition in East Asia. Her research has been supported by Taiwan′s National Science and Technology Council and the Ministry of Education. She was also the recipient of the Outstanding Research Award from the Institute of Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences Knowledge Networking in Korea.

Kuan-Wu Chen received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of South Carolina in 2024. His doctoral dissertation examines the impact of penal populism on democracy, with one chapter, “Mobilize Penal Populism: Duterte′s Narco List,” selected as SEAREG 2024 Fellow. His primary research areas encompass populist mobilization, local politics, and AI-assisted pedagogy. Dr. Chen has published in various international journals, including Taiwan Democracy Quarterly , Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies , Journal of Asian and African Studies , Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs , and PLOS One . His recent research on AI-assisted teaching employs randomized controlled trials to investigate AI grading systems and personalized feedback in large political science courses. Dr. Chen has been awarded several prestigious fellowships, including the Taiwan National Science and Technology Council′s Overseas Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (TOP Grant), the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association Research Fellowship, and the Sun Yat-sen Fellowship. He currently focuses on Japan and Southeast Asia as his research sites, exploring themes of populism, clientelism, and local politics.

Eli Yin-Shan Huang is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University. Her research interests are centered on international security, particularly the relationship between state coercion and geopolitics, with a specific emphasis on the rationale behind the use of force by states. Her dissertation focuses on mechanisms of state coercion, examining how U.S. involvement in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait—and the risks these regions pose to China′s internal stability—affect China′s strategic decisions regarding deterrence and compellence towards target countries. Her work has received support from the International Studies Association (ISA). Eli Yinshan′s research explores the geopolitical objective-oriented indicators for measuring a state′s use of force. Such work is increasingly significant as the line between peace and war becomes more indistinct. Her studies on regional security have been published in reputable journals such as China Brief and East Asian Studies. Furthermore, she is an active participant in international conferences, including the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, the American Political Science Association (APSA), and the British Association of Chinese Studies (BACS).

Dr. Heesun Yoo received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Vanderbilt University in 2023. Previously, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Quantitative Theory and Methods at Emory University (2023-2025). Her research centers on political economy of conflict, with a focus on organized crime. One strand of her research examines how economic factors, such as employment and fluctuations in commodity markets, influence the dynamics of criminal violence. In another strand, she studies how criminal actors shape politics and society across various geographical contexts. To examine these questions, she employs a combination of methods including formal modeling, quantitative analysis, and surveys. At Academia Sinica, Dr. Yoo is conducting a project examining how illegal sand mining in India – driven by domestic construction booms – shapes patterns of violence and public mobilization. Drawing on both observational analysis and survey experiments, her project seeks to illuminate three intertwined aspects: (1) How environmental degradation from excessive natural resource extraction influences public mobilization; (2) How the presence of violent illicit actors affects mobilization and violent outcomes; ; and (3) How material benefits from construction booms alter incentives for mobilization. Her project contributes to the literatures on the natural resource curse, social mobilization, and illicit actors and violence. Her broader research has appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Social Science Quarterly, and Economics Letters.

Hung-Yen Hsu is a Ph.D. candidate at the College of Communication, National Chengchi University. His research interests primarily focus on China′s media control and propaganda, political communication, and the study of media and political rituals, with particular attention to the mediatization of political rituals in contemporary China. His doctoral dissertation examines the mediatization process of political rituals in Xinwen Lianbo (2007-2023), employing big data and artificial intelligence technologies to analyze how power, symbols, and ideology construct party-state identity through media. Additionally, his research explores the application of AI and big data analysis in political communication research, as well as the impact of China′s United Front work on the media industry. Hsu′s research and book reviews have been published in journals including Mainland China Studies and Mass Communication Research. He actively participates in international conferences such as the International Political Science Association (IPSA) World Congress, the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Annual Conference, and the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) Annual Meeting, sharing his insights on Chinese media politics and innovative applications of AI technologies in research.

Ding-Yi Lai is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica (IPSAS). He received the Ph.D. in the Department of Social Welfare from National Chung Cheng University in July 2022. Ding‐Yi Lai′s research interests include comparative welfare states, comparative authoritarianism, and quantitative research methods. His dissertation investigated the influence of the distribution of power between regime leaders and elites on welfare development. His work has published inInternational Journal of Social Work and Social Welfare, Journal of Asian Public Policy, and Journal of National Development Studies.