Changwook Ju

Welcome to my website!

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Yale University and an incoming International Security Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (2024–2025).

I study international relations and security, focusing on military recruitment, battlefield effectiveness, and civil–military relations. My dissertation examines how a country’s military recruitment system affects the performance of its armed forces in battle. I am also interested in democracy and war, public nuclear attitudes, China and international politics, East Asian security, the political economy of conflict, political violence, and conflict-related sexual violence. In my work, I employ both quantitative and qualitative methods.

My research and training have been supported by the American Political Science Association, the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, the Women Faculty Forum at Yale University, and the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, among others. My articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, and International Studies Review.

I hold an M.A. and M.Phil. in Political Science (en route to a Ph.D.) from Yale University. Before Yale, I earned my M.P.P. from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and dual undergraduate degrees in public policy and political science from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea.

From 2011 to 2013, I served in the Republic of Korea Marine Corps, attaining the rank of sergeant.