About Me

I am currently a Japan Research Fellow with the Leiden Asia Centre and Senior Associate Researcher at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy. My research interests are Japan’s security and diplomacy, the U.S.-Japan alliance, U.S. foreign policy, alliance politics, and Indo-Pacific security. I regularly write on these topics for The Diplomat, participate in Track 1.5 Dialogues such as the Japan Trilateral Forum and Indo-Pacific Dialogue, and speak on these topics, including most recently at Georgetown University, University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, European University Institute (EUI), the Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy (CSDS), and the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.

Previous work experiences include: Presidential Management Fellow with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Japanese Affairs; Associate Political Scientist with the RAND Corporation’s Defense and Political Science Department; and News Producer for TV Tokyo’s Washington, DC Bureau.

I have a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT, and a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. My doctoral dissertation examined the Political Origins of Alliances using historical cases from Japan. I was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to support my dissertation research, and I have held visiting research appointments with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science.

I am based in the Netherlands. I am fluent in English and Japanese and am beginning to learn Dutch.