Jungjae Hong 

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a 2026–27 Herb York Dissertation Fellow at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). I am also a recipient of UCSB’s Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowship.

My research focuses on international security, with particular interests in nuclear weapons, alliance politics, and international institutions. I examine why military capabilities and security relationships have different consequences across political and institutional contexts. One strand examines how domestic and alliance institutions shape the effects of military capabilities on international conflict. The second examines asymmetric security relationships, asking when security dependence generates political influence, how states manage the instruments through which security commitments are implemented, and how allies interpret signals of commitment. Across these projects, I combine cross-national statistical analysis, original data collection, historical evidence, and survey experiments.

I also co-developed UNGAInsight, a dataset of United Nations General Assembly resolutions from 1990–2023 that provides detailed information on resolution topics, targeted countries and associated demands, and the political context of voting absences. An article introducing the dataset has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Peace Research. The data and codebook are available  on the UNGAInsight website.

During my Ph.D., I participated in Columbia University’s Summer Workshop on Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy (SWAMOS) and IGCC’s Public Policy and Nuclear Threats (PPNT) Boot Camp. Prior to beginning my Ph.D. at UCSB, I earned an M.A. in International Relations from Seoul National University and was a research fellow at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Education and Research Center (NEREC) at KAIST. 

Email: jungjae_hong@ucsb.edu