I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. I received my PhD from Northwestern University and hold a Master of Legal Studies from the University of Chicago Law School.

My research examines how international law and institutions are designed, with a focus on transnational organized crime, diplomacy, and negotiation history. My book project, Designing Global Crime Governance, explores how consensus requirements and delegate norms shape international cooperation in crime governance, drawing on fieldwork at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna and interviews with diplomats worldwide.

I also pursue research on institutional design beyond crime governance. In my forthcoming article “The Nuclear Arms Control Index” at Conflict Management and Peace Science, we introduce a new dataset on the design of nuclear arms control agreements using an LLM coding workflow. In my new article “Arbitrators as Advisors,” coauthored with Minju Kim at The Review of International Organizations , I examine how investment arbitration practitioners shape the design of investment treaties.

Email: bowon.kim[@]uta.edu