Irene Chan is a Singapore-based policy researcher and program manager with over a decade of experience in research coordination, policy analysis, and stakeholder engagement across China and Southeast Asia. She specializes in Chinese foreign policy, Southeast Asian geopolitics, and the regional implications of Beijing’s expanding influence.
Irene has worked with leading institutions including RSIS, Business China, and Carnegie China, where she led research initiatives, facilitated Track II dialogues, and produced policy-relevant analysis bridging academic research and strategic decision-making. Her work involves close collaboration with diplomats, scholars, and business leaders throughout the Indo-Pacific.
At the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Irene strengthens the organization’s regional engagement through research on China–Southeast Asia relations and the Belt and Road Initiative, while building partnerships with think tanks and institutions across the region.
Fluent in English and Mandarin, she combines analytical depth with extensive field experience and a commitment to advancing nuanced understanding among Canada, Southeast Asia, and China in an increasingly complex Indo-Pacific environment.

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Ms. Jennifer Anson is the National Security Coordinator for the Republic of Palau. She has been in the position since the establishment of the office in 2021. Prior to that, Ms. Anson established the Anti-Human Trafficking Office under the Ministry of Justice. Ms. Anson is also the head of the National Central Bureau of INTERPOL for Palau.

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Dr. Hunter Marston is an Adjunct (Non-resident) Fellow with the Center for Strategic & International Studies Southeast Asia Program. His research focuses on great power competition in Southeast Asia, Indo-Pacific security and alliances, and U.S. foreign policy. He is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at La Trobe Asia and an Associate with 9DashLine. He was a 2021 nonresident WSD-Handa Fellow at the Pacific Forum in Honolulu and the recipient of a Robert J. Myers Fellows Fund from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Previously he was a Senior Research Assistant for the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and a researcher with the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Southeast Asia program. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia-Pacific Affairs as well as a MA in Southeast Asia Studies and Masters in Public Administration from the University of Washington. In 2012 he was a Harold Rosenthal Fellow in International Relations in the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Contemporary Southeast Asia, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

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Dr. Gaurav Saini is the Co-founder of the Council for Strategic and Defense Research (CSDR), a leading New Delhi think tank focused on foreign policy, defense, and strategic affairs. At CSDR, he leads on project design and implementation, crafting frameworks that explore India’s foreign policy evolution, assess technological impacts on national security, analyze internal security challenges, and examine India’s relations with East Asia, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. His expertise extends to designing annual geopolitical assessments, scoping defense industry collaborations, facilitating Track 1.5/2 dialogues, and leading multi-stakeholder research programs.

With a PhD in International Politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, focusing on India’s strategic culture toward China (1998-2014), Dr. Saini has been an Emerging Quad Think Tank Leader and a European Union exchange fellow.

Dr. Saini has written extensively on global policy debates, addressing themes such as India-Australia defense and security partnerships, Indian foreign policy transitions, the Quad’s strategic resilience, US-India relations amid global shifts, India-Europe defense cooperation, the Global South’s geopolitical rise, India’s counter-terrorism doctrines, India-China dynamics within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, India’s military manufacturing advancements, Brazil-India defense synergies, and China’s engagements in the Indo-Pacific.

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Nguyen Thi Lan Huong is Director of the Center for International Law, East Sea Institute, Diplomatic Academy of Viet Nam (DAV) since 2022. She was Deputy Director of the Center for International Cooperation, East Sea Institute, DAV from 2020 to 2022.
Her research field is Public International Law and the Law of the Sea. She got her bachelor in International Relations, specialised in International Law in the Institute of International Relations in Viet Nam (2007); LLM in International and European Law in the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France) (2011) and PhD in International Law in the Diplomatic Academy of Viet Nam (2023).

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John Hemmings is Senior Advisor at the Pacific Forum and a Deputy Director for Geopolitics at the Council on Geostrategy. He specializes in alliances and strategic competition, with a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific, Japan, AUKUS, the FVEY, NATO, and other security groupings. Prior to assuming this role, Dr Hemmings worked at the US Department of Defense regional center, the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, where he led efforts on defense industry, lectured on geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific region and on occasion provided briefings for Special Operations Command Pacific, US Pacific Fleet, and US Indo-Pacific Command. In the UK, he has given evidence to two separate Parliamentary UK Defence Committee inquiries on the Indo-Pacific and provided bespoke briefings across the UK government – to include the Cabinet office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office, and Ministry of Defence. His analysis and commentary have featured on various media, including the BBC, the Financial Times, Fox News, CNN, and the Telegraph newspaper. His research has been published by various policy and academic journals. He gained his PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics in 2017.

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Narushige Michishita is Executive Vice President and Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo. He is also Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC and Director of the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS) Japan. He has previously served as a member of the National Security Secretariat Advisory Board, a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, a senior research fellow at Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Ministry of Defense, and as an assistant counselor at the Cabinet Secretariat for Security and Crisis Management of the Government of Japan. A specialist in Japanese security and foreign policy as well as security issues on the Korean Peninsula, Michishita is the author of “The US Maritime Strategy in the Pacific during the Cold War,” in Sebastian Bruns and Sarandis Papadopoulos, eds., Conceptualizing Maritime and Naval Strategy: Festschrift for Peter M. Swartz, Captain (USN) retired (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2020); Lessons of the Cold War in the Pacific: U.S. Maritime Strategy, Crisis Prevention, and Japan’s Role (Woodrow Wilson Center, 2016) (co-authored with Peter M. Swartz and David F. Winkler); and North Korea’s Military-Diplomatic Campaigns, 1966-2008 (Routledge, 2009). He acquired his Ph.D. with distinction from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University.

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Dr Euan Graham joined ASPI as a Senior Analyst in July 2023. During his career, Euan has developed a deep knowledge of Australia’s regional security environment, working for think tanks in Australia, Singapore and the UK, where he previously worked for the British foreign office, including time on the ground in North Korea and Southeast Asia. Before joining ASPI, Euan was based in Singapore, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, where he was closely involved in organising the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual summit of defence ministers from across the Indo-Pacific region.

He has published extensively, on a broad range of defence and security topics, including as a regular contributor for The Strategist since 2013. He has published two solo-authored books: Japan’s Sea Lane Security 1940–2004: A Matter of Life and Death? (2005) and Australia’s Security in China’s Shadow (2023).

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Riho Aizawa serves as a research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), under Japan’s Ministry of Defense, specializing in U.S. foreign and security policy toward China and military coercion in the Indo-Pacific region. Until 2023, she also served as both speechwriter and policy advisor in the Ministry of Defense’s Indo-Pacific Policy Division, supporting senior officials in shaping Japan’s regional defense initiatives toward ASEAN and the Pacific Islands Region.

She collaborates with Japanese and international think tanksーincluding the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA), the Nakasone Peace Institute, and the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR)ーon projects related to Indo-Pacific security, with a particular focus on the Taiwan Strait. She was a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. in 2024, and earlier served as a policy research fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS, as well as a research intern at the Hudson Institute.

Aizawa holds a Master’s degree from the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University (2023), a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Gakushuin Women’s College (2020), and a Bachelor’s degree from Gakushuin Women’s College (2016).

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Associate Professor & Senior Researcher, Center for Maritime Safety and Security Studies, Japan Coast Guard Academy

Specialty                                              International Law, International Organizations

Current Research Interests                  International Law, International Organizations, Coast Guards Cooperation

LL.D. Kobe University, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, 2003

Hague Academy of International Law, 2000

LL.M. Kobe University, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, 1997

B.A. Liberal Arts, Faculty of Social Sciences, International Cristian University, 1995

Erasmus Programme, Tilburg University, 1993.

Associate Professor (joint-appointment), GRIPS, since 2024

Associate Professor & Senior Researcher, Center for Maritime Safety and Security Studies, Japan Coast Guard Academy, since 2023

Visiting Associate Professor, Kobe Gakuin University, since 2022.

Lecturer, Kobe University, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, 2020-2021.

Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations, 2006-2009.

Cabinet Office, Secretariat of the International Peace Cooperation Headquarters, 2013-2016.

Embassy of Japan in Fiji Islands (also accredited to Kiribati, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Nauru), 2010-2013.

Embassy of Japan in Ghana (also accredited to Liberia and Sierra Leone), 2007-2010.

Foreign Policy Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2005-2007.

Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations, 2002-2004.

Permanent Mission of Japan to the International Organizations in Geneva, 1997-2000.

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