Joel Naoki Christoph

Joel Naoki Christoph is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) at the Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He works on the FWO-funded project The Weaponisation of Ideas: US-China Competition in the Symbolic Field, led by Professor Caterina Carta.

His research looks at how the United States and China compete over ideas of global leadership and world order. He works with English- and Chinese-language sources and uses both discourse analysis and computational text methods. His broader research interests include technology and economic statecraft.

He studied economics at University College London, the Barcelona School of Economics and the European University Institute, and also studied at Tsinghua University and Yenching Academy at Peking University. Before joining CSDS, he held fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Centre for the Governance of AI. He speaks eight languages, including Japanese and Mandarin.