— MEET OUR TEAM

Image of Amy King
  • Chief Investigator (2017-Present )

    Amy King is an Associate Professor in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University, where she is also Deputy Director (Research) in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs. She is the author of China-Japan Relations after World War Two: Empire, Industry and War, 1949-1971 (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Amy has undertaken intensive language study and fieldwork in China, Japan and Taiwan over the past 15 years, and engages regularly with the Australian policy community on issues of contemporary foreign and security policy.

    Photo Credit: Flashpoint Labs

Image of Xiaoyu Lu
  • Postdoctoral Research Associate (2019-2021)

    Xiaoyu Lu is an Assistant Professor in the School of International Studies at Peking University. His monographs include Norms, Storytelling and International Institutions in China: The Imperative to Narrate (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) and a non-fiction account of the Peruvian presidential election (Lima Dream: When a Chinese Wanders into an Election, Shanghai Literature Press, 2021). His work has also appeared in the Guardian, The Diplomat, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He gained MSc and DPhil degrees in Politics at the University of Oxford.

    Personal Website

  • PhD Candidate & Research Assistant (2020-Present)

    Wenting He is a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at the ANU, whose research takes a historical institutionalist perspective to examine the role of crisis in driving China’s reform of the international monetary system since 1997. She tutors a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, and serves as the Higher Degree Research (HDR) Candidate Representative for the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.

    Personal Website

  • Research Assistant (2023- Present)

    Milla recently completed a Bachelor of Asian Studies (Honours) at the ANU, majoring in China Studies. Her Honours thesis examined the way in which Chinese and Western International Relations frameworks characterise China’s Cold War foreign economic policy towards Mongolia. Milla received a Diploma of Chinese Language from Renmin University of China in 2020, where she studied under a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council.

Image of Meira Chen
  • Research Assistant (2022-2023)

    Meira works as a lawyer and research officer, having graduated from UNSW with a Bachelor of Laws and International Studies. She is a previous recipient of the Westpac Asian Exchange Scholarship and an Australia-Japan Youth Dialogue alumni. Meira also holds a Masters of Arts in International Relations from Waseda University through the Japanese Government (MEXT) scholarship. Her master's thesis examines the experiences of New Colombo Plan Scholarship alumni to explore ways that Indo-Pacific student mobility programs can be optimised for past, present and future participants.

    Westpac Scholars

Image of Alicia Turner
  • Research Assistant (2022- Present)

    Alicia is a Bachelor of Arts (Advanced) undergraduate at the University of Adelaide, majoring in International Relations. She is interested in exploring constructions of security in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly with regards to East Asia and the Pacific Islands, and how these relate to Australian security ideas. Passionate about Australian-Japanese relations, she was awarded the Westpac Asian Exchange Scholarship to facilitate her current exchange to Hosei University, Tokyo, where she studies Japanese language and politics.

    Westpac Scholars

    Selected Publications

    Wallis, Joanne, Ireland, Angus, Robinson, Isabel and Turner, Alicia. 2022. “Framing China in the Pacific Islands.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 76 (5): 522-545.

    Turner, Alicia. 2021. “Terrorism is Communication.” Illustratio; Adelaide Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2: 12-18.

Image of Nan Liu

Research Collaborations

We are always delighted to hear from scholars working on related areas, as well as from prospective research assistants (particularly with Chinese or Japanese language skills) interested in joining our project.

Please fill out the form if you are interested in working with this research project.

Thank you for your support

This project is funded by the Australian Research Council (DE170101282), Westpac Scholars Trust, and the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University.