Axel Berkofsky is Professor at the University of Pavia, Italy and Senior Associate Research Fellow, Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI, Milan, Italy). 

Dr. Berkofsky has extensively published on Japanese foreign and security policies, China and EU-Asia relations and is a regular contributor to journals, magazines, newspapers and online publications.

He is a member of EJARN executive committee.
E-mail: Axel.Berkofsky@unipv.it

Breata Bochorodycz is an associate professor at the Institute of Oriental Studies of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. Her research focuses on Japanese politics, diplomacy and foreign policy, the US-Japan relations and Okinawa issue, social movements and civil society. Recent pubBeata lications include Japan’s Foreign Policy Making. Central Government Reforms, Decision-Making Processes, and Diplomacy (coauthored with K. Żakowski and M. Socha; Springer 2018), Fukushima and Civil Society. Japanese Anti-Nuclear Movement From The Socio-Political Perspective (Routledge 2022, published in Japanese by Akashi Shoten in 2024), “The Security Policy Community And The Consensus On The US–Japan Alliance: The Role Of Think Tanks, Experts And The Alliance Managers,” The Pacific Review (2024, pp. 1-31).

Beata holds MA in Japanese studies from AMU and MA in political science from Kyushu University in Japan, PhD and habilitated PhD (dr hab.) from the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw. She received scholarships from the International Rotary Club, Japanese Ministry of Education, Japan Foundation, and Fulbright Foundation. She has worked and stayed as visiting researcher at Yokohama National University, Sigur Center for Asian Studies at George Washington University in Washington D.C., School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo.

Email: bochorod@amu.edu.pl

Bart Gaens works as Leading Research Fellow at the Global Security Research Programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) in Helsinki. He also holds the title of docent at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki. In the past he has worked as Project Director for FIIA’s Center on US Politics and Power (CUSPP), as Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Helsinki, and as Specially-Appointed Associate Professor at Osaka University, Japan. He has published on Europe-Asia interregionalism and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process, Japan’s foreign policy and regional role, India’s foreign policy and relations with the EU, domestic politics in Myanmar, and security-related issues in the Indo-Pacific region. He has also (co)edited volumes and reports on connectivity, EU-Asia relations, the US-China rivalry, transatlantic relations, and Japan’s search for strategic partnerships.

Website: https://www.fiia.fi/en/expert/bart-gaens

Email: bart.gaens@fiia.fi

Chris Hughes is Professor of International Politics and Japanese Studies and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education), at the University of Warwick. Previously he was Research Associate at the Institute for Peace Science, Hiroshima University (IPSHU). From 2000-2001 he was Visiting Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo; and in 2006 he held the Asahi Shimbun Visiting Chair of Mass Media and Politics at the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo. He has been a Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and Visiting Scholar at the East Asia Institute, The Free University of Berlin. In 2009/2010 he was the Edwin O. Reischauer Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. He holds degrees from the universities of Oxford (BA and MA), Rochester (MA), and Sheffield (MA and PhD). Research scholarships have been received from the Japanese Ministry of Education, the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee, the European Union, British Council, and the British Academy. He is the author of Japan’s Reemergence as ‘Normal’ Military Power (2004), Japan’s Remilitarisation (2009), and Japan’s Foreign and Security Policy under the ‘Abe Doctrine’ (2015). He is co-editor of The Pacific Review. His research interests include Japanese foreign and security policy; Japanese international political economy; regionalism in East Asia; Japanese radicalism and terrorism; post-Cold War traditional and non-traditional security policy; US-Japan alliance relations; North Korea's external political and economic relations; globalisation and security. He is a member of EJARN executive committee.

Website: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/hughes
Email: c.w.hughes@warwick.ac.uk

Pekka Korhonen is Professor of World Politics at Jyväskylä University, Finland. He started his studies on Japan in 1986 as a visiting research student at Tokyo University, studying Japanese foreign policy. Since then he has always kept Japan in the centre of his attention, but simultaneously he has tried hard not to become a Japanologist, with which he means a Japan-only researcher. His studies have instead moved in the area of international political economy, world politics, and geopolitics, and methodologically he has specialized on conceptual, rhetorical, and narrative analysis.

During the 1990s he concentrated especially on studying Asian and Pacific integration, which resulted in books Japan and the Pacific Free Trade Area (Routledge 1994) and Japan and Asia Pacific Integration: Pacific Romances 1968-1996 (Routledge 1998). During this decade he has studied mostly the conceptual history of Asia during the past 2500 years, in several languages and cultural areas, Japan included. He has written on the subject in Japanese アジアの西の境 (国際日本文化研究センター、２０００年) and a number of articles in Finnish, Swedish and English.  

Website: http://users.jyu.fi/~pkonen/PekkaKorhonenJYU/Etusivu.html 
Email: pekka.a.korhonen@jyu.fi

Eva Liias is guest lecturer in Asian business and head of the Contemporary Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu, Estonia.
Her background is Japanese studies, Chinese studies, and linguistics from the University of Tübingen and she obtained her PhD from the Berlin Free University in Japanese studies with her PhD thesis looking at Japanese responses to internationalization of higher education. She has also studied at Sophia University and conducted research at the University of Tokyo in Japan. Prior to her PhD studies she worked several years in China, which sparked the interest in analyzing higher education policies and intercultural communication.
Currently, she is doing research on cross-cultural negotiations, trust, and trust-building in business communication, focusing specifically on Japan and Europe/ Estonia, and leading seminars at the University of Tartu on East Asian business communication and Japanese business and economy.
Besides academic work, she does Japan and China-related translations and interpretations. She is also a co-founder of Japan Lifestyle OÜ engaging in export and import between Japan and Estonia. One of the missions is to assist Estonian producers and entrepreneurs to enter the market in Japan, on the other hand to introduce Japanese food products to the Estonian market. This reflects her own passion for Japanese green tea.

Email: eva.liias@ut.ee

Paul Midford is Professor of international relations at Meiji Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japan. He specializes in Japanese foreign and security policies, and East Asian regional politics and security. Midford has published in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, The Pacific Review, Asian Survey, and Japan Forum. He is author of Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? (Stanford University Press, 2011); and Overcoming Isolationism: Japan’s Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism (Stanford University Press, 2020). He is co-editor with Wilhelm Vosse, of Japan’s new security partnerships: Beyond the Security Alliance (Manchester University Press, 2018); and New Directions in Japan´s Security: Non-U.S. Centric Evolution (Routledge, 2020). Midford received his doctorate in Political Science from Columbia University in 2001, and previously taught at Kanazawa University, Lafayette College, Kwansei Gakuin University, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. He is a member of EJARN executive committee.

Email: Paulmid@k.meijigakuin.ac.jp

Ian Neary is an emeritus Fellow of the Nissan Institute and St. Antony's College, Oxford University having retired from his post of Professor in the politics of Japan in the Department of Politics and International Relations in September 2019. He previously taught about Japan at the universities of Huddersfield, Newcastle and Essex, and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Saitama, Fukuoka and Kyushu. He has written on aspects of policymaking in Japan with a focus on the pharmaceutical industry and a comparative study of human rights implementataion in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In 2010 he published a biography of Matsumoto Jiichiro (1887-1966) a human rights activist, businessman and left-wing politician. He has published a textbook, The State and Politics in Japan (2002, 2nd edition 2019), and a translation of Teraki and Kurokawa's Hisabetsu Buraku no Rekishi (Renaissance Books, 2019) He is currently working on a study of the development and impact of Dowa policy. 

E mail: ian.neary@nissan.ox.ac.uk

John Nilsson-Wright (formerly Swenson -Wright) is a senior university lecturer at Cambridge University and an official fellow at Darwin College; he also is concurrently senior research fellow for Northeast Asia and Korea Foundation Korea Fellow with the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. He was head of the Chatham House Asia Programme from March 2014 to October 2016 and is a graduate of Christ Church and St. Antony's College, Oxford and SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on Cold War history and the contemporary international relations of Northeast Aisa, with reference to Japan and the Koreas. He is the author and editor of a number of books including Unequal Allies? United States Security and Alliance Policy Toward Japan 1945-1960 (Standford University Press, 2004); Crisis of Peace and New Leadership in Korea: Lessons of Kim Dae-jung's Legacies (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 2014), The Politics and International Relations of Modern Korea (Routledge, 2016) and Global Britain and Proactive Japan: Developing a 21st Century Partnership (Royal Insitute of International Affairs, 2019). His recent articles include Nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula: strategic adaptation, the Abe Administration and extended deterrence in the face of uncertainty, Japan Forum (2018) and Creative Minilateralism in a Changing Asia: Opportunities for Security Convergence and Cooperation between Australia, India, and Japan, Chatham House(2017). His current research focuses on populism and identity politics as a contemporary and historical phenomenon in both Europe and Northeast Asia.   

Websites:
https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/directory/nilssonwrightjohn
http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/network/john-nilsson-wright/
http://www.chathamhouse.org/research/regions/asia
Email: jhs22@cam.ac.uk, johnnilssonwright@icloud.com  

Paul O’Shea is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University. He was awarded Docent by Lund University in 2019. He graduated with a joint PhD from Tohoku University in Japan and the University of Sheffield in the UK, and before moving to Sweden was a lecturer at Aarhus University in Denmark. He was also a post-doctoral fellow at the European Institute of Japanese Studies, Stockholm School of Economics.

His research focuses on society, politics, and international relations in Japan and the broader East Asian region. Specifically, he has written articles, books, and book chapters, on topics including the US-Japan alliance, international trade, territorial disputes, food security and military bases. He has published research articles in a variety of journals including Asian Security, Pacific Review, Asian Survey, Global Affairs, and Media, War & Conflict.

He recently published a co-authored monograph, Regional Risk and Security in Japan: Whither the Everyday with Glenn Hook of the University of Sheffield and Ra Mason currently at the University of East Anglia, available in hardback and paperback with Routledge. He also recently co-edited volume entitled Risk State: Japan’s Foreign Policy Processes in an Era of Uncertainty also with Routledge.

Email: paul.oshea@ace.lu.se

Dr. Giulio Pugliese is Departmental Lecturer in Japanese Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He specialises in domestic Japanese and international politics, and international economics of the Asia-Pacific with a focus on Japan, China and the United States. He has presented and published on academic, policy-oriented and commercial themes, including in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Asien, The Australian Journal of International Affairs, East Asian Policy, NATO Defence Strategic Communications, Pacific Affairs, The Pacific Review. He is a regular contributor to Asia Maior, Italy’s leading journal on contemporary Asian affairs. And he co-authored Sino-Japanese Power Politics: Might, Money and Minds (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017, also available in Korean).

He was a Wissenschatflicher Mitarbeiter at the Department of Chinese Studies in Heidelberg University, a Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London, and a recipient of a British Academy post-doctoral fellowship. He has held visiting scholar positions at GRIPS, the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, and George Washington University.

Email: giulio.pugliese@kcl.ac.uk

Dick Stegewerns is Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, where he teaches courses on modern and contemporary Japanese history, international relations, politics, society, culture, and film. At present he conducts research projects on postwar Japanese war films; Japanese views of the outside world; the visualisation of Japanese history in film, manga and anime; the Japanese film director Naruse Mikio; and a postwar global history of the Japanese fermented drink sake. He resided at Nichibunken in 2017-18 as the leader of the collective research project on Tōzai bunmeiron: the Japanese discourse on the dichotomy of Eastern and Western civilization and the related Japanese tendency to give their country a special role in between these two civilizations. His latest publications are ‘From Chinese World Order to Japan's Modern Mindset’, In Kurt Almqvist & Yukiko Duke Bergman (ed.), Japan's Past and Present. Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2020; ‘The Cinematic Reconstruction of East Asia in Postwar Japanese War Films’, In Barak Kushner (ed.), Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020; ‘The Three Waves (and Ways) of Sake Appreciation in the West’. In Nancy Stalker (ed.), Devouring Japan – Japanese Cuisine and Foodways, Oxford University Press, 2018.

Website: https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/people/aca/japanese-studies/tenured/dickst/
Email: dick.stegewerns@ikos.uio.no

Patrik Ström is the Director of the European Institute of Japanese Studies (EIJS) at Stockholm School of Economics and Associate Professor of Economic Geography. He holds a PhD in Business Administration from Roskilde University, Denmark and an Econ Dr. in Economic Geography from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His research is focusing on the development of the advanced service industry and the transformation of economies that are becoming more service and knowledge based. The primary regional focus has been Japan, South Korea, China and other emerging markets of East Asia, as well as the Single Internal Market for services in the EU. He has also been involved in policy related work for the EU Commission and the EU Parliament. Recent projects involve how the advanced service industry facilitates a green and circular development of the economy in Europe and Asia.

Patrik has prior to joining the EIJS been working at the Department of Business Administration, University of Gothenburg and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala. Patrik has also been a visiting researcher at Nippon Institute of Technology, Keio University, Stanford University and University of British Columbia.

Email: Patrik.Strom@hhs.se

Marie Söderberg, is Professor at the European Institute of Japanese Studies at Stockholm School of Economics. She has a PhD from Stockholm University in 1986. The title of her thesis was “Japan’s Military Export Policy”. She has published on Japanese Influences in Asia, Japan- China, Japan-South Korea and Japan-North Korea relations. A central focus of her research is Japanese foreign aid policy on which she over the years have done numerous studies of various aspects. Marie Söderberg is the senior editor of the European Institute of Japanese Studies, East Asian Economics and Business Studies, a book series published by Routledge in London and New York. She is also the chairperson of EJARN’s (European Japan Advanced Research Network) executive committee as well as the chairperson of the Swedish Instititue of International Affairs.

Email: Marie.Soderberg@hhs.se

Bryce Wakefield is national executive director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. From 2012 to 2018 he was lecturer of Japanese politics and international relations at Leiden University’s Institute for Area Studies. From 2008 to 2012 he was the associate responsible for Northeast Asian programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. His recent publications focus on constitutional issues and defense policy in Japan. He has also edited several multi-author publications on Japanese politics and foreign policy, including A Time for Change?: Japan’s “Peace” Constitution at 65 (Woodrow Wilson Center, 2012). His other writings have focused on political marketing and national identity in Japan. His work and views have appeared in such outlets as BusinessWeek, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, and the Washington Times and on CSPAN, as well as in such Japanese outlets as the Daily Yomiuri, NHK, and the Sankei Shimbun. He lived in Japan for six years and has been a visiting associate professor at Keio University in Tokyo. He earned his master’s degree from Osaka University’s School of International Public Policy and his Ph.D. in political studies from the University of Auckland. He was the politics editor for the academic journal Japan Studies.

Email: bryce.wakefield@internationalaffairs.org.au