Joseph Young: 2026-27 University Research Professor Q&A

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 14, 2026) — Joseph Young, Ph.D., professor and director of the University of Kentucky Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, has been honored as a 2026-27 University Research Professor.

Through internationally recognized research, Young examines the forces driving political violence and its far-reaching effects on nations and communities. His work is widely published across disciplines, including political science, economics, criminology and international studies. He is co-author of the Columbia University Press book, “Tortured Logic: Why Americans Support Torture” (with Erin Kearns), which explores public attitudes toward coercive interrogation and national security policy. 

Young has advised and collaborated with organizations across the U.S. defense and development communities. He has consulted on Defense Department initiatives to counter violent extremism and led design and implementation of an impact evaluation of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs aimed at reducing violence in Colombia.

Prior to joining UK in 2024, Young spent more than a decade at American University, where he served as professor, department chair and associate dean for research.

He spoke with UKNow about his latest honor as a University Research Professor in this Q&A.

UKNow: What does it mean to you to be recognized as a University Research Professor?

Young: Receiving this recognition from the University of Kentucky is genuinely humbling. To be recognized with such an esteemed group is such an honor. I came to UK because of the Patterson School’s commitment to connecting rigorous scholarship with real-world impact. This professorship affirms the university’s support for the kind of research I have spent my career building: work that is methodologically rigorous, theoretically grounded and focused on understanding one of society’s most consequential challenges, why people resort to political violence and what policies can help reduce its impact.

On a more personal level, I think of the graduate students and collaborators who have made this work possible, and of the many colleagues, at UK and beyond, whose pushback, generosity and intellectual rigor have sharpened my thinking. Recognition like this is never individual. It reflects a community of inquiry, and I am grateful to be part of one as strong as ours.

UKNow: How will the professorships program advance your research?

Young: The timing of this award was perfect. I am at an inflection point in my research agenda — moving from years of foundational work on measuring and explaining political violence into what I believe is the next frontier: using artificial intelligence and large language models to fundamentally improve how conflict data are collected, coded and shared across the research community.

The University Research Professorship will give me the resources and institutional support to pursue that agenda more ambitiously than I otherwise could. Specifically, I plan to use this support to convene the conflict research community around standards for AI-assisted data collection, including an NSF-funded workshop I am currently developing, and to produce the kind of synthetic, standards-setting scholarship that moves a field forward.

UKNow: What inspired your focus on this area of research?

Young: I’ve always been troubled and fascinated by political violence. I became a scholar during the post-Cold War period, when scholars and policymakers alike were confronting a wave of civil wars, ethnic conflict and terrorist campaigns that existing theories of interstate war struggled to explain. The optimism of the early 1990s gave way, quickly and brutally, to Rwanda, Bosnia, Chechnya and a long series of conflicts that made clear that political violence was not just something from the past but an enduring feature of political life.

I was also shaped, more personally, by 9/11. I wanted to understand this horrible violence and how to prevent it from happening again. The methodological dimension of my work — the focus on measurement, data quality and now AI — grew out of frustration. I wanted to answer hard empirical questions and I kept running into the limits of available data. Improving the data became a research agenda in its own right, because you cannot explain what you struggle to measure.

UKNow: What continues to motivate your work?

Young: Every year, tens of thousands of people are killed in political violence. Millions more are displaced, traumatized and impoverished by conflict. These are not abstractions, these are all real people. At the same time, I am genuinely motivated by the conviction that better research leads to better understanding, and that better understanding and evidence — eventually, imperfectly, nonlinearly — leads to better policy. I have seen the data I have helped build or improve used by policymakers at places like the Department of State or USAID, nongovernmental organizations and journalists working to document abuses, allocate aid and design evaluations and interventions. I want my research to matter in the real world.

UKNow: How does your research impact Kentucky?

Young: The connection between conflict research and Kentucky is more direct than it may seem. Communities in Eastern Kentucky and the Appalachian coalfields have experienced the long-term effects of economic displacement, declining trust in institutions and deepening social divisions, challenges often examined by conflict researchers around the world.

I also think about impact through the students I teach and mentor at the Patterson School. Many of them are Kentuckians who will go on to work in state government, federal agencies, international organizations and the private sector. They leave UK with a rigorous understanding of how political violence works, how to evaluate evidence critically and how to think carefully about the tools, including AI tools, they will use throughout their careers. That is, ultimately, a Kentucky impact: an investment in the people who will shape this state’s relationship to the wider world.

About the University Research Professors

Each year, the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees approves a cohort of faculty as University Research Professors. The distinction recognizes excellence in work that addresses scientific, social, cultural and economic challenges in Kentucky and the world.

College leadership developed criteria for excellence within their area of expertise and then nominated faculty who excelled at these criteria. Each University Research Professor receives a one-year award of $10,000.