Soyoung Lee

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University. I study International Relations, with a focus on how domestic politics influence international rivalries, territorial disputes, and perceptions of national friends and foes. Collectively, my research seeks to understand why some international conflicts become domestically salient and enduring while others do not.

My first book, titled "What States Fight For: Territory and the Making of National Interest" (forthcoming with Princeton University Press, Studies in International History and Politics), examines what kind of international issues are perceived as national interests worth fighting for and why. This book is based on my dissertation, which won the Best Dissertation in International Relations Theory from the American Political Science Association, the Walter Isard Award for the Best Dissertation in Peace Science, and the Stuart A. Bremer Award for the best graduate student paper from the Peace Science Society. 

My second book project examines how countries come to identify their principal international adversaries. It studies when and why domestic political groups converge on a common rival, when they fail to do so, and how these disagreements shape the emergence, persistence, and de-escalation of international rivalries.

My other research broadly examines how foreign policy preferences are formed and contested domestically. These works include how school history education and historical memory shape attitudes toward other countries; which factors affect alignment choices amid great-power competition; how leaders' hawkishness is conceptualized and perceived; and how changes in the international system affect alliance behavior.  My research has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, International Interactions, International Organization, and more. 

I am on research leave for the 2026-27 academic year and will be a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania during Spring 2027. 

I received my Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in 2023 and was an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University. Before that, I graduated with a B.A. in political science from Yonsei University, South Korea, where I was the recipient of the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies Scholarship and the National Scholarship for Humanities and Social Sciences.  

• Email: soyoung.lee@yale.edu

• Mail:  115 Prospect St. Rosenkranz Hall, PO Box #208301, New Haven, CT, 06511