Professional Bio

Yuxiang Chen is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at The Pennsylvania State University, with specializations in International Relations and Political Methodology.

His research focuses on international relations, particularly international security, signaling, and foreign policy. It examines how states communicate commitments and resolve through costly actions and public statements, and how domestic and international audiences interpret those signals. He studies these questions with attention to reputation and credibility, in the contexts of alliance commitments, government responses to covert and gray zone operations, arms transfers, and exits from multilateral institutions.

Methodologically, his research combines design-based causal inference, survey experimental methods, machine learning, natural language processing, and historical case studies.

Prior to Penn State, he earned an M.A. in Political Science from Duke University.