PhD Candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Government

​I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, focusing on international relations and methods. I completed two degrees from Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea): a bachelor's in economics and international studies in Underwood International College and a master's concentrating on international development cooperation and international trade and economic development in the Graduate School of International Studies.

My broad research interests include international development, poverty, political economy of foreign aid, political violence, experimental methods, mixed-methods, (mis)perceptions, and (mis)information.

My dissertation project applies a mixed-methods approach, including survey experiments, field experiments, and qualitative in-depth interviews. The project explores how perceptions regarding aid are created and how (mis)perceptions of foreign aid influenced by (mis)information could be corrected or worsened in developing countries. This project received support from various competitive research grants, including the APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant funded by the National Science Foundation, Texas Politics Research Grant, Clements Center for National Security's Grants in History, Strategy, and Statecraft, and the Carl J. Tamara M. Tricoli Endowed Fellowship. 

I am also a team lead at the Innovations for Peace and Development (IPD) and a Graduate Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security. 
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What you do makes a difference. And you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
— Jane Goodall

​jiseon.chang@utexas.edu