Graduate Fellows

Furkan Benliogullari is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses primarily on international security, international law, and legal claims in territorial disputes. His research project explores the effect of the legalized territorial claims on the strategic interactions between disputant states and third-party actors.

Sam Gerstle is a PhD Candidate at Boston University. His primary field is International Relations, with a focus on the political economy of security. His dissertation is on industrial mobilization for war and why some states are better at translating economic resources into military power than others.

Ji Won Jung is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on alliance politics, with a particular emphasis on burden-sharing and reassurance signals. Her current research examines how a powerful ally’s interest toward a junior ally shapes burden-sharing arrangement.

Stephen Schick is a PhD Candidate in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, researching Chinese politics through the lenses of comparative and international political economy. His dissertation investigates how the expansion of privately held wealth poses political risks for authoritarian regimes, and how political elites shape institutions to manage the tradeoffs between economic growth and domestic stability.

Trang Vu is a third-year PhD student in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. She studies signaling, coercive bargaining, intrawar negotiations, war termination, and crisis decision-making. Her dissertation project focuses on beliefs and coercion, with an empirical focus on the Vietnam War.

Chamseul Yu is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Texas A&M University. His research centers on international conflict and cooperation, with specific focus on alliance with great power rivalry, and audience costs. His ongoing projects examine alliance politics from the perspective of minor powers—so-called protégés—in asymmetric alliances, and how domestic politics shape the causes and outcomes of international interactions including economic statecraft.