Kurt M. Campbell is currently Co-Chair of the Board at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and Founding Partner, Chairman, and CEO of The Asia Group, a strategic advisory and investment group specializing in the dynamic and fast-growing Asia Pacific region. Dr. Campbell also contributes a regular column for the Financial Times and is writing a book about his experiences working on Asia in the Obama Administration, entitled The Pivot. From 2009 to 2013, he served as the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, in which capacity he is widely credited as being a key architect of the “pivot to Asia”. Previously, he also served as Director of the Aspen Strategy Group, Chairman of the Editorial Board for the Washington Quarterly, founder and Chairman of StratAsia, and Senior Vice President, International Security Program Director, and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at CSIS.

Dr. Green served on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) from 2001through 2005, first as Director for Asian Affairs, with responsibility for Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and then as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Asia, with responsibility for East Asia and South Asia. Before joining the NSC staff, he was Senior Fellow for East Asian Security at the Council on Foreign Relations, Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center and the Foreign Policy Institute, an assistant professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and Senior Adviser on Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also worked in Japan on the staff of a National Diet member.

Dr. Aizawa received his PhD from School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University in 2006. His research interest includes politics in Indonesia, Thailand, Urbanization, the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Previous, Dr. Aizawa has worked at Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University in Bankok, and at Southeast Asian Program, Cornell University both as a visiting researcher. He also served research fellow at Japan Sciety for the Promotion of Science and at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is the author of Kajin to Kokka-Indonesia no China Mondai.

Dr. Akiayama’s research field is international politics, international security. His recent publications include Nuclear Order in Northeast Asia: The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the Region, Nonproliferation, and the Tension between Disarmament and Deterrence, The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation (2011, Co-authored).

Mr. Kotani is a research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) and teaches at Hosei University in Tokyo. His research focus is the US-Japan alliance and maritime security. He is also a senior research fellow at the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS) in Tokyo, and a member of the International Advisory Board at the Project 2049 Institute in Washington. He received a security studies fellowship from the RIPS in 2006-2008.  He won the 2003 Japanese Defense Minister Prize. He has published numerous articles both in English and Japanese, and his recent English publications include “The Senkaku Islands and the US-Japan Alliance” (Project 2049 Institute, March 2013), and “China‘s Fortress Fleet-in-Being and Its Implications for Japan’s Security” (Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Fe
bruary 2013). He is preparing his first book on maritime security.

Mr. Kobayashi is Manager of Oil Group of the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ). He received his BA in social sciences from Hitotsubashi University and his MA in international relations and economics from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Earlier he was an analyst at Tonen General Sekiyu, an ExxonMobil- affiliated company in Japan covering refinery operation planning and marine transportation. At IEEJ, he is responsible for the research on the world oil and gas market and energy security issues in Northeast Asia. His works includes “Energy security in Northeast Asia,” Journal of Economic and Energy Development, Volume 31 Number 2 2006, “Destabilization of the crude oil market and the efforts toward market stabilization,” IEEJ Energy Journal, August 2010, “Price Volatility and the ‘Asian Premium’: Growing Russian crude oil inflow may ease the issue?” (with Kensuke Kanekiyo), Managing Regional Energy Vulnerabilities in East Asia (edited by Zha Daojiong) Routledge, December 2012.

Mr. Shiozaki is a partner of Nagashima Ohno and Tsunematsu, one of Japan’s leading law firms, practicing mainly in the fields of corporate governance and crisis management.  He worked in the Prime Minister’s office as senior policy advisor from 2006 to 2007.  He also served as one of the core working group members in the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident. Mr. Shiozaki graduated from the University of Tokyo (LLB, 1999), and earned a master’s degree in International Policy Studies from Stanford University (MA, 2000).  He also holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (2010). Shiozaki co-authored “Japan’s Worst Case Scenario – Nine Blind Spots” (2013) and many other articles.

Prior to joining Keio University, Dr. Jimbo was a Director of Research at the Japan Forum on International Relations Inc. (JFIR) in 2003-2004, and a Research Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) in 1999-2003. He obtained his Ph.D from the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University in March 2005. His main research fields include Japan-US Security Relations, Japanese Foreign and Defense Policy, Multilateral Security in Asia-Pacific, and Regionalism in East Asia. He has been a member of various governmental commissions and research groups including the Globalization Working Group of the 21st Century Vision (Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, Cabinet Secretariat. His recent articles (in English) include, Ken JIMBO ed., Regional Security Architecture in the Asia-Pacific, Tokyo Foundation (2010) (in Japanese) Ajia Taiheiyo no Chiiki Anzen Hosho Ahkitekucha; Dr. Jimbo is concurrently a Senior Research Fellow at the Tokyo Foundation, and the Canon Institute for Global Studies.

He received his Ph.D from Australian National University in 1999. Before taking up his current position in April 2012, he was an assistant professor at National University of Singapore (1999-2006) and associate and full professor at Waseda University (2006-2011). He also has served as a visiting professor at University of Warwick, U.K. (2011 and 2012) and a Japan Scholar at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C. (2012). His areas of speciality include international political economy in Asia and the Pacific, theoretical and empirical studies of Asian regionalism and domestic and international politics regarding FTAs, and his articles were published by major international academic journals including The Pacific Review, Journal of Politics, Australian Journal of International Affairs, or Asia Pacific Economic Papers. His publications include East Asia and the Asia-Pacific; Competing Regional Integration Initiatives (2013 University of Tokyo Press). He is the recipient of the 2005 J.G. Crawford Award.

Dr. Nakanishi’s research focuses on politics and civil-military relations in Myanmar and Pakistan. Dr. Nakanishi previously worked with Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO) and was a visiting scholar with Southeast Asia Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a division of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington D.C. He is the author of Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution: The State and Military in Burma, 1962-1988 (National University of Singapore Press, 2013). His Japanese publications have appeared in Tonan Ajia Kenkyu (Southeast Asian Studies), Tonan Ajia – Rekishi to Bunka (Southeast Asia: History and Culture) as well as edited volumes.

Dr. Nakayama concurrently serves an Adjunct Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA). Dr. Nakayama was a Special Correspondent for the Washington Post at the Far Eastern Bureau (1993-94), Special Assistant at the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations in New York (1996-98), Senior Research Fellow at The Japan Institute of International Affairs (2004-06), CNAPS Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution (2005-06), and Associate Professor at Tsuda College (2006-10). He received both his M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. (2001) from Aoyama Gakuin University’s School of International Politics, Economy and Business (SIPEB). He has written numerous articles on American politics and foreign policy.

Aft
er working as a Tokyo correspondent for Financial Times as well as a freelance translator, Dr.Hijino received his MPhil and PhD from Cambridge University, Faculty of Oriental Studies. He also served as JSPS Post-Doctoral Fellow as well as a guest researcher at Osaka City University. His research interest is comparative political institutions, party organization theory, comparative systems of local politics and local democracy. His recent publications include “Liabilities of Partisan Labels: Independents in Japanese Local Elections” on Social Science Japan Journal (2013) and “Delinking National and Local Party Systems: New Parties in Japanese Local Elections.” Journal of East Asian Studies 13.1 (2013).

Dr. Matsuda received his Ph.D. in law from Graduate School of Law at Keio University in Tokyo. He spent sixteen years in the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Japan Defense Agency (later, Ministry of Defense), as an assistant and a senior research fellow. He moved to the Institute of Oriental Culture (later, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia) of the University of Tokyo in 2008. He is specializing in political and diplomatic history of Asia, politics and foreign relations in the PRC and Taiwan, the Cross-Strait Relations, and Japan’s foreign and security policies. He was a member of the Council on Security and Defense Capability in the New Era, the advisory group of the Prime Minister in 2010. He is the winner of the seventh Yasuhiro Nakasone Award of Excellence in 2011. His recent publication in English is “Taiwan in the China-Japan-US Triangle,” Gerald Curtis, Ryosei Kokubun, and Wang Jisi eds., Getting the Triangle Straight: Managing China-Japan-US Relations, New York: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2010.

Dr.Watanabe earned a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 1997. After post-doctoral research at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, he joined Keio University in 1999, and currently, as a full Professor, is working on such subjects as Cultural Policy, Cultural Diplomacy and American Studies. His books include After America: Trajectories of the Bostonians and the Politics of Culture, which won a Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities and a Hiroshi Shimizu Award of the Japanese Association for American Studies. He was a recipient of an Abe Fellowship which he held at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He was awarded a Japan Academy Medal in 2005. He served as a Fellow at Downing College, University of Cambridge in 2007. His most recent books include American Community: Between the State and the Individual, Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States, Culture and Diplomacy, Media Cultural Policy of Soft Power.

Dr. Funabashi is a contributing editor of Foreign Policy (Washington, DC).In 1985 he received the Vaughn-Ueda Prize for his reporting on international affairs. He won the Japan Press Award, known as Japan’s “Pulitzer Prize”, in 1994 for his columns on foreign policy, and his articles in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy won the Ishibashi Tanzan Prize in 1992. He is the author of several prizewinning books; Alliance Adrift (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1998, winner of the Shincho Arts and Sciences Award); Asia-Pacific Fusion: Japan’s Role in APEC (Institute for International Economics, 1995, winner of the Mainichi Shimbun Asia Pacific Grand Prix Award) and others.

Izumi, a researcher and a practitioner, joined RJIF in March 2014. Prior to RJIF, she was a project advisor at the Secretariat of International Peace Cooperation Headquarters, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, conducting researches on UN’s peacebuilding activities particularly Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR). Her professional career began with the National Security Affairs Dept. (NSA) at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), US Navy as a research associate, then served as a technical advisor at Nepali think tank to work on knowledge production, management, and dissemination on peacebuilding in the wake of wars.
She has a MA in International Policy Studies with a certificate in Nuclear Nonproliferation Studies from Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California and BA in Politics (political philosophy and international law) from the University of California at Santa Cruz, California.