Thomas Wilkins

Dr Thomas Wilkins is an expert on Asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific security affairs, focusing on Australian and Japanese strategic and foreign policies. His conceptual research is aimed at innovating our understanding of security architecture, including alliances, strategic partnerships, and other forms of alignment, as well as international power theorising – “middle powers” and “awkward powers”. He is also highly active in security policy debates, serving as a (non-resident) Senior Fellow for the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA) and Regular Contributor to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s InternationalInformation Network Analysis (IINA).

Dr Wilkins has a wealth of regional experience, having previously held one-year Fellowships through the Japan Foundation (JF) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences (JSPS), both tenured at the University of Tokyo, and a Ministry of Foreign Affairs Taiwan Fellowship, conducted at the Taiwan National University.He has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Nanyang Technical University and held Visiting Associate Professorships at the University of Hong Kong, and Keio University, Japan. He subsequently completed an MPhil in Asian Studies (part-time) at the University of Sydney, Dept. of Japanese Studies.

Before joining USYD in 2008, he was a Lecturer in Security/Military History at the Dept. of Politics and Contemporary History (PCH) at the University of Salford, UK, and completed a two-year Post-Doc at the Center for the Pacific Rim (CPR), University of San Francisco, and East West Center (EWC), Honolulu. He received his doctorate in Security Studies from the Dept. of Politics and International Studies (POLSIS) at the University of Birmingham, UK, including a one-year Exchange with the Dept. of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC.