Dr. Minseon Ku 구민선 具旼宣

Hello! I'm the Postdoctoral Fellow with the Diplomacy Project at the Global Research Institute and a faculty affiliate at William & Mary, and a member of the 2024 cohort in the NCAFP’s Korea Peninsula Emerging Leaders Program. I will be joining the Grace School of Applied Diplomacy at DePaul University as an Assistant Professor in September 2025. 

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My research interests lie in theorizing the social practice of diplomacy as an extension of international security. My book project, The Power of Performance: Summit Diplomacy and World Politics, which was selected for the Scholar's Circle at 2024 ISA Northeast Baltimore, is based on my dissertation and develops a theoretical approach to understanding the function of summitry in world politics by foregrounding the performance and audience dimensions. I argue that summitry is a performance generating ritualistic effects that enable states to manage relations among leaders, among states, and between states and laypeople. Using an original dataset of bilateral summits, survey experiments and focus group study, I illustrate that the ritual-like effects of summitry allow for a reimagination of world politics. 

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Previously, I was the Spencer fellow in US Foreign Policy and International Security at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth. I received my PhD in Political Science from The Ohio State University, and Master's and BA degrees from Yonsei University in Seoul.