V-Dem East Asia Regional Center
People
Regional Center Director
Yuko Kasuya
Yuko Kasuya is the Director of the V-Dem Regional Center for East Asia, and a Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Law, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. Her research interests include regime transition, comparative political institutions, electoral systems, party politics, and East and Southeast Asian politics. Her articles can be found in journals such as Electoral Studies, The Pacific Affairs, and Party Politic, among others. She holds a Ph.D. in International Affairs from the University of California, San Diego, an MA in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies (Netherlands), and a BA in Political Science from Keio University. From 2018 to 2021, she served as Vice President of the International Political Science Association (IPSA). She is currently editing a book on the historical origins of dictatorship and democracy in Asia.
Steering Committee
Marisa Kellam
Marisa Kellam is an associate professor of political science at Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan). Her research focuses on the quality of democracy in Latin America. In her work, she links institutional analysis to governance outcomes within three lines of inquiry: (1) political parties and coalitional politics; (2) mass electoral behavior and party system change; and (3) democratic accountability and media freedom. She has published her research in peer-reviewed journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Party Politics, Electoral Studies, and Political Communication. After earning a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA, she spent several years as an assistant professor at Texas A&M University. Since 2013, Marisa Kellam has been teaching international and Japanese students in the English-based Degree Program of Waseda University’s School of Political Science & Economics, and currently, she serves as the Program Director.
Kenneth Mori McElwain
Kenneth Mori McElwain is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. His research focuses on comparative political institutions, most recently on differences in constitutional content across countries. He received his BA from Princeton University and PhD in political science from Stanford University, and previously taught at the University of Michigan, before moving to his current post in 2015. His work has been published in a number of journals and edited volumes, including American Journal of Political Science, Journal of East Asian Studies, Social Science Japan, Chuō Kōron, and the Journal of Japanese Studies. He was the co-editor of Political Change in Japan: Electoral Behavior, Party Realignment, and the Koizumi Reforms, APARC/Brookings Institutions Press.
Research Fellows (Hong Kong)
Edmund W. Cheng
Edmund W. Cheng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at the City University of Hong Kong, where he co-directs the Centre for Public Affairs and Law and the Political Analysis Lab. His research interests include contentious politics, political communication, research methods and the sociology of knowledge, focusing on the comparative study of Asia. His work has appeared in Political Communication, Political Studies, Sociological Methodology, Information, Communication & Society, New Media & Society, China Quarterly, and China Journal. He is Vice President of Hong Kong Political Science Association, Co-editor of Social Movement Studies, and editorial board member of China Quarterly and Mobilization. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Samson Yuen
Samson Yuen is an Associate Professor of political science in the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. He studies contentious politics, civil conflicts, public opinion and civil society, focusing on East Asia (primarily the Greater China region). His research has been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Political Studies, Political Psychology, Geopolitics, Mobilization, Social Movement Studies, Sociological Methodology, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Modern China, and Journal of Contemporary Asia. He has been a visiting fellow at the Australia Centre on China in the World, Australian National University. He holds a DPhil in Politics from Oxford University and a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago.
Research Fellows (Japan)
Masaaki Higashijima
Masaaki Higashijima is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo. His research interests include comparative political economy, autocratic politics, democratization, and Central Asia. His articles appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, Studies in Comparative International Development, and World Development. His first book, The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box, is published by the University of Michigan Press in 2022. His research was funded by the US National Science Foundation, Fulbright Commission, and Suntory Foundation. He earned a Ph.D. in Political Science at Michigan State University.
Kenneth Mori McElwain
Kenneth Mori McElwain is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. His research focuses on comparative political institutions, most recently on differences in constitutional content across countries. He received his BA from Princeton University and PhD in political science from Stanford University, and previously taught at the University of Michigan, before moving to his current post in 2015. His work has been published in a number of journals and edited volumes, including American Journal of Political Science, Journal of East Asian Studies, Social Science Japan, Chuō Kōron, and the Journal of Japanese Studies. He was the co-editor of Political Change in Japan: Electoral Behavior, Party Realignment, and the Koizumi Reforms, APARC/Brookings Institutions Press.
Kota Mori
Kota Mori is an industry data scientist who has supported client companies by data analytics consultation and software development. He has engaged in projects on analyses of media and marketing activities and optimization, classification of a customer questionnaire, and development and implementation of an internal analytics platform. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University for his analysis of the newspaper market and business strategy using natural language processing and econometrics. His research interest is the application of machine learning in social science disciplines, including economics, sociology and political science.
Yoshikuni Ono
Yoshikuni Ono is a professor of Political Science at Waseda University. He completed his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Michigan. Before joining Waseda University, he held academic appointments at Tohoku University and the International University of Japan. His research focuses on the comparative study of legislative politics and electoral behavior. His work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Political Science Research and Methods, Public Opinion Quarterly, and other journals.
Jonson N. Porteux
Jonson N. Porteux is an associate professor in the Asia Studies Program at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. His research focuses broadly on investigating the causes and consequences of political violence, corruption, and democracy, using cases predominantly from East Asia (especially South Korea and Japan). He received his BA in economics from UC Berkeley (2004) and PhD in political science from the University of Michigan (2013). Most recently his work has been featured in Democratization and the Journal of East Asian Studies. Currently he is working on a co-authored book project which investigates the persistence and evolution of political (state and non-state-based) violence in otherwise strong, democratic polities.
Research Fellows (South Korea)
Won-ho Park
Won-ho Park is Professor of Political Science and International Relations, and Associate Dean of Public Affairs and Communications at Seoul National University. He is also serving as Vice President of the Korean Association of Party Studies and as Chair of Academic Affairs at Korean Political Science Association. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a Ph.D. in political science and previously taught at the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida. He also worked as a Fellow at the American National Election Studies. His research interest is in voting behavior, research methods, comparative politics, and Korean politics. His recent publications include “The effect of incumbency in national and local elections: Evidence from South Korea” (Electoral Politics, 2018) and The 2017 Korean Presidential Election (2018 Edited Volume in Korean).
Research Fellows (Taiwan)
Hans H. Tung
Hans H. Tung is a professor in the Department of Political Science and a faculty associate of the Behavioral and Data Science Research Center at National Taiwan University. He serves on the editorial boards for Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, PLOS ONE, and the Cambridge University Press book series on Taiwan Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. He is primarily interested in formal and empirical analyses of the political-economic dynamics under authoritarian rule at both macro and micro levels, and has authored several articles in academic journals such as Political Communication, Review of International Organizations, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Nature Communications, Japanese Economic Review, and Public Opinion Quarterly. More specifically, one strand of his research seeks to uncover the political logic of institutional development under authoritarian regimes. A second strand of his research explores more fundamentally individuals’ political-economic decision-making through experimental methods and data. A third strand builds on the theoretical insights developed from other parts of his research to address various issues regarding how China’s rise on the world stage affects the regional dynamics in East Asia. He was awarded the 2022 Kaid-Sanders Best Political Communication Article of the Year Award by the International Communication Association in 2023.
Yi-Ting Wang
Yi-ting Wang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. Prior to joining NCKU, Yi-ting was a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the V-Dem Institute, where she was part of the measurement model team and in charge of developing statistical models to aggregate ratings provided by country experts. She received her PhD from Duke University. Her research interests include democratization, party politics, and legislative institutions.
Research Fellows (US-based)
Charles Crabtree
Charles Crabtree is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. His research interests center on intergroup relations and conflict. Most of this work uses field or survey experiments and focuses on the United States or Japan. His research been published or is forthcoming in over 30 journals or volumes, including the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Nature Human Behavior, Political Analysis, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ji Yeon (Jean) Hong
Ji Yeon (Jean) Hong is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Politics at the University of Michigan. Her research interest is on the political economy of authoritarian regimes, with particular attention to East Asia, such as China, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. She has various ongoing research projects related to authoritarian elites’ behavior, the legacies of authoritarianism, and contemporary state-building in East Asia. She obtained her PhD at the Department of Politics at New York University. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and Political Science Research and Methods, among others.