Current Students

  • Yusuke Ishihara

    Yusuke Ishihara is a Senior Fellow of the National Institute for Defence Studies (NIDS), Ministry of Defence, Japan. He earned both a PhD and Master of Arts in Strategic Studies from the Australian National University and Bachelor’s in Law from Keio University. He seeks to bridge Japanese and English International Relations literature and to introduce conceptual framework-based analyses into the study.

    Thesis

    • Renegotiating Japan’s postwar ‘bargains’: The transformation of Japanese foreign policy and the pluralisation of the U.S. Hegemonic Order in the 1970s

    Research Interests

    • Japan’s relations with the Asia-Pacific countries;
    • The postwar history of Japanese foreign and security affairs

    Publications

    • Ishihara, Yusuke, and Ryosuke Tanaka. “World Politics amid Great Power Competition: The Pacific and European Experiences during COVID-19.” In East Asian Strategic Review 2021, edited by Marie Izuyama, 2-52. Tokyo: National Institute for Defense Studies, 2021.
    • Ishihara, Yusuke. “Japan and the Origin of ASEAN Centrality.” Hogaku-Kenkyu (Soeya-Yoshihide-Kyoju-Taishoku-Kinengo) 94, no. 2 (2021): 471-496.
    • Ishihara, Yusuke. "Japan-Australia Security Relations and the Rise of China: Pursuing the “Bilateral-Plus” Approaches." UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 32 (2013): 81-98.

  • Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto

    Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto (he/him) is a Lecturer at the Department of International Relations at Universitas Indonesia, and a fellow with the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He was a recipient of Indonesia’s LPDP Presidential Scholarship and the inaugural Indonesian fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). He is currently a PhD scholar with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, the Australian National University.

    Thesis

    • Competing over America in the Cold War: Australia-Indonesia Relations, 1945-1978

    Research Interests

    • Maritime strategy and security in theory and practice;
    • Australian, Indian, Indonesian foreign and defence policies

    Publications

    • Supriyanto, Ristian Atriandi. “Indonesia and Maritime Security Cooperation in Southeast Asia: A Study of Four Maritime Areas.” In Maritime Cooperation and Security in the Indo-Pacific Region: Essays in Memory of Sam Bateman, edited by John Bradford et al, 364-385. Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2022.
    • Supriyanto, Ristian Atriandi. “Indonesia and China’s Maritime Encroachment: Opportunities for Australia and the United States.” In Many Hands: Australia-U.S. Contributions to Southeast Asian Maritime Security Resilience, edited by Peter Lee, 10-14. Sydney: United States Studies Centre, 2022.
    • Supriyanto, Ristian Atriandi. “Indonesia-Singapore Maritime Security Cooperation: From ‘Reluctant’ to ‘Expansive’.” Australian Naval Review, no. 2 (2021): 85-97.
    • Till, Geoffrey, and Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto. Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia: Problems and Prospects for Small and Medium Navies. Cham: Palgrave macmilan, 2018.
    • Laksmana, Evan, and Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, “Abandoned at Sea: Tribunal Ruling and Indonesia’s Missing Archipelagic Foreign Policy,” Asian Politics and Policy 10, no. 2 (2018): 300-321.

  • Emirza Adi Syailendra

    Emirza Adi Syailendra is a PhD Candidate at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC), the Australian National University (ANU). Emir’s thesis investigates the persistence of maritime Southeast Asian countries’ restraint towards China in the post-Cold War period despite China’s increased assertiveness in the South China Sea. He is developing an innovative framework to unpack the negotiation of tacit understandings to help answer the puzzle of mutual restraint between China and Southeast Asia. For his thesis, Emir has spent time in the fields, including Indonesia and Malaysia to conduct interviews with the relevant elite.

    Thesis

    • Tacit Understandings: Explaining Maritime Southeast Asia’s Restraint towards China in the Post-Cold War Period

    Research Interests

    • Politics, culture, security, and foreign policy of Indonesia;
    • Southeast Asia-China relations;
    • Tacit understandings

    Publications

    • Syailendra, Emirza Adi. “A Non balancing Act: Explaining Indonesia’s Failure to Balance Against the Chinese Threat.” Asian Security 13, no. 3 (2017): 237-255. doi:10.1080/14799855.2017.1365489
    • Syailendra, Emirza Adi. “Inside Papua: The Police Force as Counterinsurgents in Post–Reformasi Indonesia.” Indonesia 102, (2016): 57-84.
    • Syailendra, Emirza Adi. “Under Suharto's Shadow: Jokowi and the Indonesian Military.” Foreign Affairs, Aug. 12, 2015. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/indonesia/under-suhartos-shadow

  • Tommy Chai

    Tommy Chai is a PhD Candidate at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, the Australian National University. He aspires to be a regional expert and is interested in understanding how history informs international relations in Southeast Asia and broader East Asia. Beyond his identity as a political scientist, Tommy enjoys cooking and comes from a family of chicken rice restaurant owners in Malaysia and Singapore, with origins from Hainan.

    Thesis

    • ‘Multiple Alignments’ and the Evolution of Regional Security Strategy in Southeast Asia (c. 1802-1978)

    Research Interests

    • The management of unequal power relations and order transition in Southeast Asia;
    • Alignments, alliances and regional security strategies;
    • Crises and flashpoints in East Asia

    Publications

    • Chai, Tommy S. H. “How China attempts to drive a wedge in the U.S.-Australia alliance.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 74, no. 5 (2020): 511-531. DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2020.1721432.

  • Paul Chamberlain

    Paul is a Strategic Defence Policy practitioner and has worked for the Government of Canada in a variety of Defence, Security, and Intelligence positions. His most recent posting was as the first Policy Advisor to the Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) where he was responsible for providing advice on domestic and international issues and coordinating the strategic direction of RCN global activities. This leads directly to his PhD project (co-supervised by Prof. Jochen Prantl) which seeks to both contribute to the scholarly literature on the role of statecraft and order in East Asia while also providing a guide for policy-makers on the strategic use of navies as a diplomatic tool.

    Thesis

    • Navigating the Ship of State – Naval Strategy as Statecraft in East Asia: the cases of Australia; Japan; and Singapore

    Research Interests

    • The role of navies in diplomacy and statecraft;
    • Strategic Diplomacy; how states can make policy that seeks to have systemic effect;
    • The nature of the East Asian security order;
    • Strategic imaginaries, its role in statecraft and International Relations

    Publications

    • Chamberlain, Paul. “The Royal Canadian Navy and Naval Diplomacy.” Niobe Papers, No. 14 (2021): 1-13.