Rikio Inouye is a Prize Fellow in the Social Sciences, and 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 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 currently has three articles under revise and resubmit between International Organization and International Studies Quarterly. The first, invited for an R&R at IO, examines public support for military intervention and shows that while democratic institutions foster solidarity, this effect is significantly shaped by racial and religious identities of the parties in conflict. The second, R&R'd at ISQ and recipient of the Best Paper in Foreign Policy Award from the American Political Science Association, offers a strategic account of U.S. and Chinese vaccine diplomacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The third, also under R&R at ISQ, investigates the drivers of American sympathies toward Israelis and Palestinians in the aftermath of the October 7th attack. Drafts and other working papers are available at his website or CV.

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.