James Lee is an affiliated researcher at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), a research center for the UC system that is based at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. His research is on U.S. grand strategy in Europe and East Asia, with a focus on the Taiwan question in U.S.-China relations. At IGCC, he is working on a project on how Taiwan’s semiconductor industry relates to the United States’ strategic interest in the security of Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2018, and he was a fellow in the Max Weber Program for Postdoctoral Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 2018-2019. He also previously served as the Senior Editor of Taiwan Security Research (TSR) from 2017-2020.
Lee’s research interests are at the intersection of international security, international political economy, and international history. He studies grand strategy and great power politics in periods ranging from the Peloponnesian War to the Cold War to the present day. He is particularly interested in geoeconomics and economic statecraft. His academic research has been published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science. He is currently working on a book that compares the United States strategy toward economic reconstruction and development in Western Europe and East Asia during the Cold War.
Lee is also interested in public policy. He has served as a contributor for East Asia Forum, with opinion pieces on Taiwan’s security. At IGCC, he has published a policy brief on 5G and U.S. national security. At the European University Institute, he published a policy brief on the Taiwan question in U.S.-China relations and its implications for the European Union.
Starting in August 2022, he will be an Assistant Research Fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, where he will join a research group on U.S.-China-Taiwan relations.
A list of Lee's media and public apperances can be found at his personal website.