William Kwok
Bio
William Kwok is a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University and Senior Essay Advisor in the Yale Ethics, Politics, and Economics (EPE) Program. His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, international relations, and political economy. He studies how violent and nonviolent conflict is organized and escalated, and how policy and technology shape these processes across authoritarian and democratic systems in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Europe.
His book project, “The Banality of Organization: Mass Killings as a Coordination Problem in the Shadow of War,” advances an organizational theory of mass killings, explaining how national leaders issue strategically ambiguous policies and why local commanders escalate them into mass violence against civilians. William also studies polarization and democratic instability, focusing on how parties’ policy responses to globalization shape political conflict. Across both projects, his research combines AI, computational, quantitative, historical, and interview methods.
His research speaks to policy-relevant debates on state violence, democratic (in)stability, and the political consequences of globalization. As Senior Essay Advisor in Yale’s EPE Program, he teaches undergraduate thesis writers research design, methods, and analytical writing.
He previously held fellowships at Heidelberg University in Germany, the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID) in Switzerland, and the National University of Singapore. His research has been generously funded by sources such as Fulbright-Hays DDRA.
William earned his PhD, MPhil, and MA in Political Science from Yale University. Prior to graduate school, he worked at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, State Street Corporation, and founded an educational consulting practice supporting international students from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.