— ABOUT

In my writing, research, and teaching I am interested in how China and Japan have historically understood their place in the world, and their role in shaping a changing international order.

Image of Amy King
Credit: Flashpoint Labs

— MORE ABOUT ME

I am Associate Professor in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University. Between 2022 and 2024, I also served as Deputy Director (Research) in the ANU’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs. I have published widely on China-Japan relations, the economics-security nexus in Asia, and the role of ideas in International Relations, and I currently lead a team researching China's historical and contemporary role in shaping the international economic order.

I have undertaken intensive language study and fieldwork in China, Japan and Taiwan over the past two decades, and provide regular research-based briefings and annual executive education courses to the Australian policy community on China and Japan. I received my D.Phil in International Relations and M.Phil in Modern Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford, where I studied as an Australian Rhodes Scholar.

My research has been supported and recognised by a range of fellowships and awards, including an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship, a Westpac Research Fellowship, and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia's Paul Bourke Award for early career researchers.

  • BA(Hons I), BBus (UniSA)

    MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies (Distinction) (Oxon)

    DPhil in International Relations (Oxon)

  • Westpac Research Fellowship (2017-2024)

    Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship (2017-2023)

    ANU College of Asia and the Pacific Award for Supervision Excellence (2023)

    ANU Clare Burton Award for Excellence in Equity and Diversity (2021)

    Paul Bourke Award for Early Career Research (Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, 2017)

    ANU College of Asia and the Pacific Award for Teaching Excellence (2015)

    Dasturzada Dr Jal Pavry Memorial Prize (University of Oxford, 2013)

    T.D. Allman Scholarship (St Antony’s College, Oxford, 2011-2012)

    Rhodes Scholarship (Australia-at-Large & Trinity, 2007)

    University Medal in Arts (2007)

    University Medal in Business (2006)

— MY STORY

I grew up in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, and began studying the Japanese language at the age of 12. 

 After years of classroom-based learning, I finally had the chance to visit Japan in 2004, when I became an undergraduate exchange student at Okayama University. In Okayama, most of my classmates were from China and Taiwan. During my year in Japan, we watched as major anti-Japanese protests sprung up in cities across China, and spent hours talking about what those protests meant for the China-Japan relationship.

When I returned to Australia, I was determined to learn more about China and to find a way to study Chinese. Receiving a Rhodes Scholarship in 2007, I spent the next five years travelling between Oxford and Beijing, studying the Chinese language, its history, and foreign relations.

Between 2008 and 2012, I spent months visiting the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives in Beijing, where I carried out the research for my doctorate and first book on the China-Japan relationship after World War Two. Having access to these archives, during this brief window of relative openness in China, was extraordinarily fortuitous: it allowed me to observe Chinese Communist Party ideas about Japan in the wake of the war, and to understand why the CCP was so determined to rebuild the post-war relationship. 

Beyond China and Japan, my work has focused on gender equity in higher education and political life. I have led gender equity strategies and initiatives at the University of South Australia, Oxford and ANU, and co-authored research with Andrew Leigh on the effects of gender on election outcomes in Australia. In 2021, I was awarded the ANU’s Clare Burton Award for Excellence in Equity and Diversity.

— EXPLORE

— FEATURED PROJECT

How China Shapes International Economic Order

Through an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship and a Westpac Research Fellowship, I lead a research team investigating China’s role in shaping the post-WWII international economic order, and the contemporary legacy of China’s historical economic ideas.