Rikio Inouye is a Ph.D. candidate on the 2025-2026 job market specializing in race, religion, and international relations. His job market paper examines how racial and religious identities fundamentally alter public support for countries in conflict, revealing critical mechanisms through which identity-based biases shape foreign policy preferences and international solidarity. Job Market Paper Draft.

His research employs rigorous survey experiments to uncover how racial and religious identities influence public attitudes toward other people and countries, with profound implications for democratic solidarity, foreign policy formation, and international cooperation. His work stands at the frontier of understanding how identity-based biases operate in global politics.

Rikio has two articles currently under revise and resubmit at International Studies Quarterly. His first article, which received the Best Paper in Foreign Policy Award from the American Political Science Association, provides a strategic analysis of U.S. and Chinese vaccine diplomacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. His second article employs a conjoint experiment to examine how American sympathies toward Israelis and Palestinians shifted following the October 7th attack. Additional projects investigate how race and religion condition democratic solidarity during crises and how Americans perceive migrant allies from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rikio is deeply committed to active and engaged learning. He received Princeton University's prestigious George Kateb Teaching Award and the McGraw Center Exemplar Mentor Award in 2024. He has organized pedagogy workshops for fellow graduate students and has been nominated twice for university-wide teaching awards.

Rikio graduated summa cum laude with highest honors in political science from UC Berkeley and is a proud alumnus of the Japan Exchange Teaching (JET) Program.