Seung-Youn is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College, specializing in international relations and comparative politics in East Asia. She also serves as faculty director of the China, Korea, and Japan sections of the Global Immersion Program at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a visiting faculty member at INSEAD Business School.

Her broader academic interests include China’s economic statecraft, the nexus between economy and security, industrial upgrading, corporate governance, the effects of national origin of foreign direct investment on local economic development, and the evolving role of the Chinese government at the national and sub-national levels in shaping the country’s developmental path.

Seung-Youn is currently working on her book manuscript, Turning China Fever into China Fear? China’s Economic Statecraft and Weaponized Economic Interdependence. In the book, she seeks to understand how Beijing’s increasing use of informal economic sanctions contributes to the weaponization of economic interdependence, politicization of businesses, and securitization of trade. Her recent articles have appeared in China Quarterly, Asian Survey, World Trade Review, Journal of Asian Public Policy, Global Asia, and Business and Politics.

In her past experiences, she served as a member of the Editorial Board of Business and Politics published by Cambridge University Press (2020-2022), and worked as faculty director of the East and Southeast Asia Summer Immersion at Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2017). She was a POSCO Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu (2016-2017) and a research fellow at the East Asia Institute in Seoul, Korea (2014-2015). She also served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2013). She has been a visiting professor at the Shanghai branch of École Supérieure des Sciences Commerciales. In addition, Seung-Youn was a visiting scholar at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing, China (2009-2010), and served as the Northeast Asia Project Director at Berkeley Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center (2005-2010). She is a recipient of the Doctoral Study Abroad Scholarship from the Korean Foundation for Advanced Studies. Seung-Youn holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Political Science from Yonsei University in Korea, where she was the valedictorian of her class. She spent a year as an undergraduate exchange student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.