2020 Research Team

The Strategic Asia 2020 authors join a community of more than 150 leading specialists who have written for the series over the years.

Frédéric Grare is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research focuses on South Asian security issues and the search for a security architecture. He has extensive professional experience working on India’s Look East policy, Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s regional policies, and the tension between stability and democratization in South Asia. Dr. Grare has served at the French embassy in Pakistan, as head of the Asia Bureau at the Directorate for Strategic Affairs in the French Ministry of Defense, and as the director of the Centre for Social Science and Humanities in New Delhi. He is the author of India Turns East: International Engagement and U.S.-China Rivalry (2017), in addition to writing extensively on security issues, Islamist movements, and sectarian conflict in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Dr. Grare received an advanced degree from the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques and a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Ji-Young Lee is the inaugural holder of the Korea Policy Chair and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and an Associate Professor of International Relations at American University. Dr. Lee is the author of China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination (2016). She is currently working on her second book, The Great Power Next Door (under contract), which concerns the past and present of Korea-China relations with a focus on security issues. Prior to teaching at American University, she was a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Oberlin College, where she was also a visiting assistant professor. Dr. Lee served as a POSCO visiting fellow at the East-West Center, a nonresident James Kelly Korean Studies fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS, an East Asia Institute fellow, and a Korea Foundation–Mansfield Foundation scholar in the U.S.-Korea Scholar-Policymaker Nexus program. She holds an MA and a PhD from Georgetown University and an MA from Seoul National University.

Syaru Shirley Lin is Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a member of the founding faculty of the master’s program in global political economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Previously, she was a partner at Goldman Sachs, responsible for private equity investments in Asia. Dr. Lin was appointed by the Hong Kong government as a member of the Hong Kong Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation, and her board service includes Goldman Sachs Asia Bank, Langham Hospitality, Mercuries Life Insurance, Swire Pacific Group, and the Focused Ultrasound Foundation. Her current research project is focused on the challenges facing countries in East Asia in the high-income trap. Dr. Lin is the author of Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Interests in Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Economic Policy (2016), which was also published in Chinese (2019). She earned an MA in international public affairs and a PhD in politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong and graduated cum laude from Harvard College.

Joseph Chinyong Liow is the Tan Kah Kee Chair in Comparative and International Politics and the Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. In addition to his academic work, he is Singapore’s representative on the advisory board of the ASEAN Institute of Peace and Reconciliation formed under the auspices of the ASEAN Charter. Dr. Liow previously held the Lee Kuan Yew Chair in Southeast Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he was also a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program. He is the author of Ambivalent Engagement: The United States and Regional Security in Southeast Asia after the Cold War (2017), Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (2016), and Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Southeast Asia (2014), in addition to co-authoring and editing eleven books. His commentary on Southeast Asian affairs has been featured in many media outlets, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the National Interest. Dr. Liow holds an MSc in strategic studies from NTU and a PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Chris Miller is Assistant Professor of International History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he co-directs the Russia and Eurasia Program. He is also the Eurasia Director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Dr. Miller previously served as the associate director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University, a lecturer at the New Economic School in Moscow, a visiting researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research associate at the Brookings Institution, and a fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Academy. His research interests include Russian history, politics, economics, and foreign policy. In addition to many scholarly and media articles, Dr. Miller is the author of two books: The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (2016) and Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia (2018). He holds an MA and a PhD from Yale University.

Liselotte Odgaard is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. She has published numerous monographs, books, peer-reviewed articles, and research reports on Chinese and Asia-Pacific security, including China and Coexistence: Beijing’s National Security Strategy for the Twenty-First Century (2012). Dr. Odgaard has been a visiting scholar at institutions such as Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute. She regularly participates in policy dialogues such as the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore and the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing. Dr. Odgaard holds a PhD from Aarhus University.

Sheila A. Smith is a Senior Fellow for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an expert on Japanese politics and the author of Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power (2019), Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (2015), and Japan’s New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (2014). She is also the author of the interactive guide “Constitutional Change in Japan.” Dr. Smith is Vice Chair of the U.S. advisers to the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange, a binational advisory panel of government officials and private-sector members, and is an Adjunct Professor in the Asian Studies Program at Georgetown University. Dr. Smith earned an MA and a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Columbia University.

Alison Szalwinski is Vice President of Research at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). She provides executive leadership to NBR’s policy research agenda and oversees research teams in Seattle and Washington, D.C. She is the author of numerous articles and reports and a co-editor of the Strategic Asia series along with Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills, including the most recent volumes, China’s Expanding Strategic Ambitions (2019), Power, Ideas, and Military Strategy in the Asia-Pacific (2017), Understanding Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific (2016), and Foundations of National Power in the Asia-Pacific (2015). Prior to joining NBR, Ms. Szalwinski spent time at the U.S. Department of State and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her research interests include U.S. policy toward Asia, especially U.S.-China relations and the importance of great-power competition for U.S. alliances in the region. She holds a BA in foreign affairs and history from the University of Virginia and an MA in Asian studies from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Ashley J. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has also served as Research Director of the Strategic Asia Program at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and co-editor of the program’s annual volume since 2004. While on assignment to the U.S. Department of State as senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Dr. Tellis was intimately involved in negotiating the civil nuclear agreement with India. Previously, he was commissioned into the Foreign Service and served as senior adviser to the ambassador at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi. He also served on the U.S. National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia. Prior to his government service, Dr. Tellis was a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School. He is the author of India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture (2001) and co-author of Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (2000). He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.

Michael Wesley is Deputy Vice-Chancellor International at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Previously he was dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, executive director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy (2009–12), director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University (2004–9), and assistant director-general for transnational issues at the Office of National Assessments (2003–4). Dr. Wesley is the author of There Goes the Neighbourhood: Australia and the Rise of Asia (2011) and Restless Continent: Wealth, Rivalry and Asia’s New Geopolitics (2015). He is currently completing a history of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands. He earned a PhD from the University of St. Andrews.

Michael Wills is Executive Vice President at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). He manages all aspects of NBR’s financial and business operations, serves as secretary to the Board of Directors, and is a member of the Asia Policy journal’s editorial advisory committee. His research expertise includes geopolitics, international security, and the international relations of Asia, with a particular interest in China’s relations with Southeast Asia. Mr. Wills is co-editor of eight Strategic Asia volumes (with Ashley Tellis and, since 2015, Alison Szalwinski) as well as New Security Challenges in Asia (2013, with Robert M. Hathaway). Before joining NBR, he worked at the Cambodia Development Resource Institute in Phnom Penh, and prior to that with Control Risks Group, an international political and security risk management firm, in London. He holds a BA (Honors) in Chinese studies from the University of Oxford.

Carol Wise is Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California (USC). She specializes in international political economy and development, with an emphasis on Latin America and specifically Argentina, Mexico, and Peru. Dr. Wise was the 2019 recipient of the Fulbright-Masaryk University Distinguished Chair Grant in the Czech Republic. She spent eight years at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies before joining USC. Dr. Wise is the author of Dragonomics: How Latin America Is Maximizing (or Missing Out on) China’s International Development Strategy (2019) and has been widely published on trade integration, exchange rate crises, institutional reform, and the political economy of market restructuring in Latin America. Her other recent publications include The Political Economy of China–Latin America Relations in the New Millennium (co-edited with Margaret Myers, 2016) and “Playing Both Sides of the Pacific: Latin America’s Free Trade Agreements with China” (2016). Dr. Wise holds an MPA and a PhD from Columbia University.