So far, I’ve lived in more than ten cities across five countries on two continents. I was born and raised in South Korea (Jeonju, Daejeon, Seoul, Changwon, and Dongducheon) and have lived in Hong Kong (Kowloon Tong), Taiwan (Muzha District, Taipei City), Canada (Vancouver), and across the United States, including the San Francisco Bay Area (CA), Ann Arbor (MI), Cambridge (MA), and soon the Research Triangle (NC). My path has also been non-linear, spanning academia, industry, public service, and civic technology. These diverse experiences have shaped my identity as a bridge builder and translator, someone who works across boundaries of scholarship and practice, discipline and sector, and place and community. They guide the research questions I pursue and the problems I choose to engage with—rooted in both scholarship and lived experience.
At the same time, my story has been shaped by where I began. As a first-generation college student from a working-class family, I’ve written personal essays reflecting on my career, research, and life as an ongoing uphill journey—one motivated by both a deep curiosity about the world and a commitment to public service and social impact.
Professional Reflections
I Didn’t Think I’d Return to Academia — Until I Saw What Was Missing
Researching and Doing Policy Science as a Political Scientist
Personal Reflections
Career Advice
Academic Job Talks as Storytelling: Why Character Matters as Much as Plot
How to Write a Statement of Purpose for Graduate School in Political Science
Korean essays
Here are some resources that have shaped my thinking on how social sciences can critically and directly inform, as well as improve, policy practice (listed alphabetically):
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez. 2025. How Social Scientists Could Help to Rebuild the Federal Government: Lessons from My Time in the Biden Administration. September 18. Substack: Can We Still Govern?
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez. 2025. How Political Science Shaped Federal Policy in the Biden-Harris Administration: Learning from Efforts to Democratize the Administrative State. Perspectives on Politics.
Burawoy, Michael. 2005. For Public Sociology. American Sociological Review 70(1): 4–28.
Donald P. Moynihan. 2022. How Can Scholars Help to Embed Institutions of Public-Sector Change? (Or Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was a Grad Student). APPAM Presidential Address. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance 5(4): 276–287.
Cyrus Samii. 2023. Methodologies for “Political Science as Problem Solving.” New York University. Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Methodological Pluralism, edited by Janet Box-Steffensmeier, Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, and Dino Christenson. Oxford University Press.
Duncan J. Watts. 2017. Should Social Science Be More Solution-oriented? Nature Human Behaviour 1, Article 0015
Esther Duflo. 2017. The Economist as Plumber. AEA Distinguished Lecture. American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 107(5): 1–26.
Marshall Ganz. 2024. People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal. Oxford University Press.
Sarah Williams. 2022. Data Action: Using Data for Public Good. MIT Press.
Susan Athey. 2025. The Economist as Designer in the Innovation Process for Socially Impactful Digital Products. AEA Presidential Address. American Economic Review 115(4): 1059–1099.