About the Program
The central element of the program brings up to 4 graduate students from other universities to USC each year, where they join USC fellows to form an annual cohort of 7-8 “Grand Strategy Predoctoral Fellows.” This creates networks among the fellows, and it also helps identify and build greater awareness that US-Asia research is a viable career path.
We want to widen the pool of scholars interested in US-Asia relations – so we do not expect graduate students to come in deeply knowledgeable. This is also an interdisciplinary program – studying North Korean film and literature, for example, can be as insightful about a country as studying its politics.
Each academic year has an intentional arc to the program: The cohort of fellows are all ABD graduate students, working on their dissertations. Some fellows are quite advanced, while others are just beginning their research.
Their scholarship will be the basis for everything they will do in their careers. Thus, the fall semester is devoted towards improving their research, with professionalization sessions, practice jobtalks, and other programs focused on their dissertations as academic scholarship. An annual exchange visit to Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Research Center anchors the fall semester.
The spring semester then pivots to preparing the fellows to interact in the American policy discourse. Our annual academic conference in January – “Bridging Asia” – provides the fellows with interactions with senior scholars around the country who are influential in policy circles, on the job market, and for postdoctoral positions.
Mid-April features a visit to USC by a senior U.S. policymaker, where the fellows brief the policymaker about their research and interact with him or her. Socializing our fellows as to how the policy discourse is discussed and debated is a key focus of the spring semester.
The arc of the year thus brings the fellows together, builds cohesion among the group, focuses on their scholarship, and then provides opportunities and mentoring for disseminating that scholarship to both academic and policy audiences.
The program is headed by Co-PIs David Kang (Maria Crutcher Professor of International Relations) and Jonathan Markowitz (Associate professor of political science and international relations), both in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at USC. Dr. John Park and Dr. Gloria Koo are Senior Advisors. The program also involves other faculty from USC and beyond.