Welcome

I am a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science and the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California San Diego. 

I study education, state-building, and authoritarian resilience, with a focus on Vietnam and Southeast Asia. My research examines how authoritarian states use education to expand their territorial reach, foster political compliance, and cultivate human capital. Through the lens of internal migration, teacher policy, and curricular content, I explore how states reconcile the seemingly competing goals of developing citizens’ skills and securing political loyalty. I combine extensive qualitative fieldwork and survey experiments with quantitative analyses of original geospatial, text, and historical administrative data. My research has been supported by the Yankelovich Center, the International Institute, and Southeast Asia Research Group Pre-Dissertation Fellowship.

Email: klle@ucsd.edu