Cecilia Hyunjung Mo

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley
Research Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University

Cecilia Hyunjung Mo holds a Ph.D. in Political Economics and an M.A. Political Science from Stanford University; an MPA in International Development from Harvard University; and an M.A. Education from Loyola Marymount University. During the 2015-2016 academic year, she was a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Robert Eckles Swain National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Professor Mo specializes in behavioral political economy, comparative political behavior, the political economy of development, and social policy research. Her scholarly contributions can be broadly classified as being of two types.

First, she is interested in understanding democratic citizenship and the development of informed interventions aimed at meeting contemporary challenges. The health of a democratic polity rests upon the public possessing a sufficient level of trust in government, political efficacy, civic engagement, tolerance, and respect for human rights. Her research centers on how the norms and values of democratic citizenship can be cultivated; and on both understanding and responding to the following challenges to democratic citizenship: (1) group-based intolerance; (2) irrational political participation; (3) modern day slavery; and (4) poverty and inequality.