National University of Singapore

Department Member, Political Science

Visiting Fellow

About

I was born in Melbourne but spent my formative years in sunny Brisbane. I graduated from Griffith University in 1992 with a BA in Modern Asian Studies and then moved to Japan, where I completed an MA in Political Science at Seikei University. I wrote my thesis in Japanese on changing Japanese perceptions of the Soviet Union/Russia (my former supervisor, Professor Tomita, and I still have nightmares over this harrowing experience!). I was awarded a PhD from Monash University in 2004 for a dissertation that examined Russo-Japanese subnational government relations. 


I have taught a broad range of subjects at tertiary level including Japanese (language), International Business, Japanese History, Australia-Japan Relations and Russian Politics. At NUS I mainly teach courses on international relations, comparative politics and research methodology. My research interests include comparative politics, international relations of the Asia-Pacific region, Japanese politics and foreign policy and Russian politics and foreign policy. I am a member of the Global Terrorism Research Unit in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University. I am the co-editor of Japan, Australia and Asia-Pacific Security (Routledge 2006), the author of Resolving the Russo-Japanese Territorial Dispute: Hokkaido-Sakhalin Relations (Routledge 2007) and have also published in several internationally refereed journals. I appear regularly in the local media on a wide range of issues related to the international relations of the Asia-Pacific region.