About
My research examines how the spatial organization of social and political life shapes political behavior and development. I study how infrastructure, the built environment, and the geography of everyday contact create winners and losers, structure who encounters whom, and translate into political engagement and electoral outcomes. My work sits at the intersection of comparative political economy, political behavior, and public opinion. It is anchored in Japan and extends to South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia.
My current projects examine how being bypassed by high-speed rail reshapes support for incumbents and populist challengers, how the post-pandemic tourism boom fuels support for anti-foreigner parties, how hosting military facilities creates economic dependencies that shape local voting, and how street network design affects the potential for collective action in Southeast Asian cities.
I also work on research methods, with a focus on spatial causal inference, Bayesian analysis, multilevel models, and measurement and scaling. I am currently interested in methods and models to account for spatial spillover and confounding. I have published several papers on the use of AI in the social sciences, examining its accuracy in predicting and classifying political phenomena.
