I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

My research agenda seeks to explain conditions for out-group prejudice reduction and in-group intolerance with a focus on identity politics, racial and ethnic politics, and immigration. I pay special attention to how various out-group prejudice-mitigating efforts affect people’s attitudes and policy preferences in both American and comparative contexts using experimental methods (survey and field experiments) and in-person interviews.

Some core questions that motivate my research include: can racial and ethnic minority immigrants’ expressed appreciation for a quintessential local culture (e.g., enjoying local food, music, and sports) mitigate native populations’ anti-immigrant attitudes their support for restrictive immigration policies? When and why do individuals from racial and ethnic minority groups support punitive actions against their own co-ethnics?

My dissertation examines the potential role that expressed local cultural appreciation and sharing of psychological social identity can have on prejudice reduction in native-immigrant contexts. In the first two chapters, I study whether White Americans are less likely to consider Asian immigrants as threatening when Asian immigrants express their appreciation for a quintessential local American culture (e.g., Texas BBQ in Texas and country music in rural America). In the final chapter, I investigate whether natives and immigrants’ sharing of some psychological social identity can mitigate natives’ anti-immigrant attitudes. In doing so, I examine whether shared foreign sports fandom (shared English Premier League fandom) between natives and immigrants can mitigate natives’ negative evaluations of minority immigrants in South Korea and Singapore.

I have received several generous grants and fellowships to support my research. Grants from the Academy of Korean Studies, Texas Politics Project, Irma Rangel Public Policy Institute, and Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab have supported my research. During my time in graduate school, I have received fellowships from the Rapoport Family Foundation, College of Liberal Arts Graduate School, and the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

I am also serving as the Lab Manager at the PRE lab, Graduate Project Lead at Innovations for Peace and Development (IPD), and a Graduate Research Fellow at Irma Rangel PPI.