Professor Sato holds a BA (Law) from Keio University, MA (International Studies) from University of South Carolina, and Ph.D (Political Science) from University of Hawaii. He currently teaches at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University and is the Dean of International Cooperation and Research and the Director of the Democracy Promotion Center. Previously, he has also taught at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Auckland University (New Zealand), Kansai Gaidai Hawaii College, and University of Hawaii. His major works include Norms, Interests, and Power in Japanese Foreign Policy (co-edited with Keiko Hirata, Palgrave, 2008), and The Rise of China and International Security (co-edited with Kevin Cooney, Routledge, 2008), The U.S.-Japan Security Alliance (co-edited with Takashi Inoguchi and G. John Ikenberry, Palgrave, 2011), Regional Institutions, Geopolitics and Economics in the Asia Pacific (co-edited with Steve Rothman and Utpal Vyas, Routledge, 2017), Re-Rising Japan (co-edited with Hidekazu Sakai, Peter Lang, 2017).
Prof. Arvind Kumar is currently Professor of US Studies at the Centre for Canadian, US and Latin American Studies, School of International Studies, JNU. He is Concurrent Professor at Special Centre for National Security Studies and School of Engineering, JNU. Formerly, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal. He has been the recipient of a number of fellowships and has a number of publications of repute to his credit.
Ambassador R Rajagopalan retired from the Indian Foreign Service in March 2004. His last posting was as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco. He had earlier been India’s Ambassador to Cuba (1998-2001) and to Guyana (1989-92) – with concurrent accreditation to St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Commonwealth of Dominica. He has also served in Indian Missions in Russia, Hong Kong, China Japan, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia.
He speaks Chinese, French and Spanish. Ambassador Rajagoplan has also served in the Department of Atomic Energy as Director for External Relations and in the Ministry of Defence as Joint Secretary for foreign collaboration in defence production and exports. Before joining the Indian Foreign Service (in 1973), Ambassador Rajagopalan was a commissioned officer in the Indian Army, Regiment of Artillery and participated in the 1971 operations, both in the Eastern and Western sectors. Currently, he is the Secretary of the Association of Indian Diplomats, Consultant with BEML Limited, Member of the Editorial
Board of the Indian Foreign Affairs Journal, Diplomatic Editor of India Strategic, Guest Faculty at the Foreign Service Institute and a Member of the Committee of the Centre for Latin American, Caribbean and North American Studies, S.I.S., JNU.
Amit Gupta is an Associate Professor in the USAF Air War College, Alabama. His writings have focused on arms production and weapons proliferation, South Asian and Australian security policies, Diaspora politics, popular culture and politics and, more recently, on the US-China rivalry and the impact of demography on US foreign policy.
His articles have appeared in Orbis, Asian Survey, Security Dialogue, The Round Table, and Mediterranean Quarterly. He is also the author or editor of seven books the most recent of which are Air Power: The Next Generation, (Howgate Publishing, 2020), Maritime Heritage and Challenges in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific (Routledge, 2018).
Dr. Le Van Toan, Ph.D., is the Chairman of the Research Committee and was the Founding Director General of the Centre for Indian Studies (CIS), Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics (HCMA) of Vietnam. Previously ,he had been in leadership roles in a number of institutes including the Institute of Scientific Information, the Journal of Theory Topics for Leadership of HCMA , Manager of the Sino-language training program of Hanoi University of Education (HUE) etc. He has published and edited over 49 books, and over 100 journal papers. He has been teaching and supervising at post-graduate programs of HCMA, HUE and many other universities.
Dr Siegfried O. Wolf is the Director of Research at the South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), a Brussels based think tank, and he is the Senior Researcher (member) at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. At Heidelberg University, he completed his Master of Arts degree (2003) and his PhD (2009) in South Asian Political Science. Additionally he is an affiliated researcher at the Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU, Durham University, UK), and a former research fellow at the Institute of Political Science (IPW, Heidelberg University) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH, New Delhi, India). He was member of the external expert group of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force, German Federal Foreign Office, and worked as a consultant for the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Germany.
Cleo Paskal is a non-resident senior fellow at FDD focusing on the Indo-Pacific region, in particular, the Pacific Islands and India.
She has testified before the U.S. Congress, regularly lectures and moderates for seminars for the U.S. military, and has taught at defense colleges in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Canada, and Oman.
From 2006 to 2022, she was an associate fellow at Chatham House, London, where, among other responsibilities, she was research lead on the multi-year futures project “Perspectives on Strategic Shifts in the Indo-Pacific 2019-2024.”
She is widely published in the academic and popular press and has written for (among many others): The Diplomat, Defense News, The Telegraph, South China Morning Post, The Australian, Japan Times, The World Today, and International Affairs and is currently the North America Special Correspondent for The Sunday Guardian (India) newspaper.
Jakub Zajączkowski, PhD, D.Litt is a Professor at the Institute of International Relations, University of Warsaw. He is a Visiting Professor in over 20 universities across the globe. His expertise is on international relations in Indo-Pacific, Foreign Policy of India, the EU-Asia relations, regionalism and globalism. He has published over 50 articles in various research journals and edited volumes and is editor for a number of journals and books.
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