Amanda Leckner is a Junior at Virginia Tech, majoring in National Security and Foreign Affairs. 

She became interested in North Korea’s state of affairs and human rights issues in junior year of high school. In her sophomore year of college she decided to pursue research related to propaganda and surveillance in North Korea as her research topic for her department's research and writing course. From there, she knew that she wanted to continue to conduct research on the regime and work in North Korea-South Korea relations in her future career. 

At Virginia Tech, Amanda is an undergraduate research assistant under Dr. Ashley Shew on NSF CAREER Award on “Disability, Experience, and Technological Imagination” (#1750260). Further, she is an active member of Mozaiko, an intercultural living-learning community, in which she has served as the Vice President of Mentorship for the 2021-2022 academic year and will continue to serve in that role for the 2022-2023 cohort. In the Living-Learning community, she practices global competency and cross-cultural immersion.

After completing her undergraduate program she hopes to pursue a Juris Doctorate, to work in areas of international relations and human rights law.