About

I am an Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. I received a Ph.D. in Political Science (2023) from the University of Washington, Seattle, and an MA in Political Science (2019) from Yonsei University. 

My research program examines various obstacles to low-carbon energy transition at the (sub)national level across countries, mainly in the US and South Korea. My current work focuses on the lack of political support for renewable energy (RE) and grid infrastructure in rural areas. Specifically, I examine why and how rural communities perceive the siting process of utility-scale energy facilities as unfair and their developers as untrustworthy, and whether this perception motivates their political resistance to renewable energy facilities and policies. I am also interested in grounding perceptions of various injustices in energy policy and projects in evidence, using quantitative methods such as spatial modeling. Other strands of work draw on a club theory approach to explain what motivates (sub)national governments and private firms to undertake climate action and what shapes the stringency of their actions. 

My papers have been published or are forthcoming in various journals, including Environmental Politics, Climate Policy, Energy Research & Social Science, npj Climate Action, Energy Research Communications, Policy Sciences, and Review of Policy Research. They have been featured in media outlets and magazines such as WSJ, Forbes, The Regulatory Review, Skeptical Science, and Reputation.

Before joining the University of Nevada faculty, I served as a graduate chair of the Center for Environmental Politics and a graduate fellow at the Clean Energy Institute at the University of Washington. Before joining the doctoral program, I was a youth climate activist and a composer. 

Here is my CV, and here is my Google Scholar page.