The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), in pursuit of training the next generation of scholars on contemporary Asia, has selected two postdoctoral fellows for the 2017-18 academic year. The fellows will begin their year of academic study and research at Stanford this fall.
Shorenstein APARC has for more than a decade sponsored numerous junior scholars who come to the university to work closely with Stanford faculty, develop their dissertations for publication, participate in workshops and seminars, and present their research to the broader community.
The 2017-18 cohort includes two Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellows; they carry a broad range of interests from labor migration policy in China to regional institutions in East Asia. Their bios and research plans are listed below:
H. Seung Cho is completing his doctorate at Columbia University’s Department of Political Science. He researches U.S. and Chinese foreign policy toward East Asia’s regional institutions with a broader interest in U.S.-China relations, the political economy of East Asia and qualitative research methods. His dissertation probes the popular narrative that United States and China are competing over East Asia’s regional architecture, arguing that mutual misperception and security dilemma dynamics also play out in the politics of regional institution building. To explore this phenomenon, Seung has conducted extensive fieldwork in Beijing, Jakarta, Seoul and Washington, D.C. At Shorenstein APARC, Seung will be developing his dissertation into a book manuscript while looking to further examine the relationship between the politics of East Asia’s multilateral security institutions and their perceived lack of effectiveness. Previously, Seung was a predoctoral fellow at Peking University’s School of International Studies from 2014-16. Prior to starting his doctoral studies, he also served in South Korean military intelligence as part of the two-year national service. Seung holds a Bachelor of Science in government and economics and Master of Science in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Samantha Vortherms is a doctoral candidate in the University of Wisconsin – Madison Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on comparative political economy, development, social welfare and research methodology. Her dissertation examines subnational variation in access to citizenship rights in China through the household registration system. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education through the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad and the Social Science Research Council's Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, among others. At Shorenstein APARC, Sam will work on converting her dissertation to a book manuscript and advance her post-dissertation project on the role of the firm in labor migration policies. Before going to Wisconsin, Sam received her Master of Arts in international relations at the University of Chicago, Artium Magister in public policy from University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Richmond. From 2014-16, she was a visiting research fellow at the National School of Development's China Center for Health Economics Research at Peking University.
