Rikio Inouye is a Ph.D. candidate studying race, religion, and international relations. His current research employs survey experiments to analyze how racial and religious identities alter public support for other people and countries.  Ongoing projects include how race and religion alter democratic solidarity for other countries under threat, and how Americans view migrant allies, such as those from Afghanistan and Iraq.  

He has a revise and resubmit at International Studies Quarterly for his work on health and vaccine diplomacy in the context of great power competition, and was awarded the Best Paper in Foreign Policy Section at APSA. He is passionate about teaching, winning the department teaching award in 2024 and organizing pedagogy workshops for fellow graduate students.

Rikio graduated summa cum laude with highest honors from UC Berkeley with a BA in political science.