Read more about our Contributors

Andrew Catton is an Educational Content Specialist and a registered Indonesian, English, and Humanities teacher. He is the founder of Pondok Bahasa, an Australian education initiative producing cinematic, curriculum-aligned Indonesian language resources for schools. He has appeared before the House Standing Committee on Education’s Inquiry into Building Asia Capability and participated in the Asialink Education National Roundtable on Enhancing Australian Schools’ Engagement with Indonesia (2025).

Dr Geoff Heriot is a consultant on media and governance, a former corporate and editorial executive of the ABC, with extensive international experience. A review of his book, International Broadcasting and its Contested Role in Australian Statecraft: Middle Power, Smart Power (Anthem Press), appeared in The Reading Room on 30 January 2024.

Dr Jon Cottam is a Lecturer in National Security and Intelligence in Macquarie University's School of International Studies and a Fellow of Macquarie University's Geopolitical Risk Research Centre. His research focuses on the intersection of biology, national security and intelligence.

David Hundt is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Deakin University. His research focuses on the International Relations of Asia and the Indo–Pacific, and especially in relation to Australia’s economic and security relations with South Korea, the two countries’ ties with China, and Korean multiculturalism and migration. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of Asian Studies Review, the journal of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, and he has recently served as both Vice-President and President of the Association.

Grant Wyeth is a foreign policy analyst and columnist for The Diplomat.

Dr Shannon Zimmerman is a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Studies at Deakin University. She received her PhD from the University of Queensland in 2019 and her MA in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University in 2012.

Dr Bryce Wakefield is the CEO of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He has lived, worked and researched in the United States, Japan, Europe and New Zealand. He trained as a political scientist with particular expertise in International Relations and the international affairs of East Asia. From 2008 to 2012 Bryce was the associate responsible for Northeast Asian programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. In this role, he was responsible for conceiving, designing and organising around 60 events in Washington, including policy briefings in the U.S. Congress, on political issues in Australia, Taiwan, North and South Korea and Japan. He co-organised, with the Wilson Center’s partners, three major annual policy conferences in Tokyo. He has also given talks in Japanese, including for parliamentarians at the National Diet Building From 2012 to 2018, he was a tenured lecturer of area studies and international relations at Leiden University in the Netherlands. At Leiden he taught numerous classes on the foreign policy and domestic politics of Japan, the politics of East Asia, comparative politics, and the relationship between politics and culture. He designed and implemented a successful specialisation on culture and politics for Leiden’s graduate program in International Relations. During his time as a university academic he also delivered training, induction and briefing sessions for Dutch and international diplomats in the Hague and in Japan. Bryce is regularly quoted in the media. His work and views have appeared in print in all major Australian newspapers as well as in, BusinessWeek, Canberra Times, Daily Yomiuri, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, the Japan Times, Sankei Shimbun, de Volkskrant, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times, and many others. He has also appeared on most Australian television networks, as well as such international broadcasters as BBC News, CSPAN, NHK (Japan) and MSNBC. In February 2015, the Tokyo bureau chief of the New York Times named him as one of 10 “influential and reliable intellectuals” outside Washington that could help foster better ties between Japan and the then Obama Administration. Bryce’s academic publications to date focus on constitutional issues and defence policy, political marketing and national identity in Japan. While at the Wilson Center, he also edited and contributed to several of the centre’s multi-author publications on East Asian politics and foreign policy. Bryce lived in Japan from 1998 to 2004 and earned his master’s degree from Osaka University’s School of International Public Policy. He earned his PhD in political studies from the University of Auckland.

Benjamin Isakhan is Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Alfred Deakin Institute and Professor of International Politics in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University, Australia. Ben is also Adjunct Senior Research Associate, Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa and Consulting Scholar at the Penn Cultural Heritage Centre at the University of Pennsylvania in the US.

Dr Jeffrey McGee is a Professor at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and Faculty of Law, University of Tasmania. His work focusses on international law and governance issues relating to Antarctica, Oceans and Climate Change.