Read more about our Contributors

Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is a researcher focusing on China-Indonesia-Middle East relations. He holds a B.A. in International Affairs from Qatar University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Manchester.

Dr Federica Caso is a lecturer in International Relations at La Trobe University. Her research examines gender and race in the military, war, and peacebuilding. She is currently pursuing a research project on Indigenous military integration and reconciliation in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Her book Settler Military Politics: Militarisation and the Aesthetics of War Commemoration was published in 2024 by Edinburgh University Press.

Dr Vu Lam a political scientist affiliated with UNSW Canberra, focusing on Southeast Asian trade, diplomacy and strategic affairs. He has worked across research, policy and government sectors, and writes regularly on regional integration and Australia’s Indo-Pacific engagement.

Dr Babet de Groot is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Wollongong and an expert in global plastics governance. She has attended five sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, most recently INC-5.2 in Geneva.

Hugh Piper is a director at Ancrum Advisory. He also edits The Policymaker, a digital publication of the Australian Public Policy Institute. Hugh has previously worked at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue, and as a ministerial speechwriter and strategic policy adviser at the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Oxford and degrees in law and history from the University of Sydney.

Dr Pierre Pahlavi is a full professor at the Royal Military College of Canada in the Department of Defence Studies, co-located with the Canadian Forces College, Canada’s Staff and War College. His research focuses on Iran and its asymmetric strategies, public diplomacy, and the use of force in the international system. He has published in various journals in strategic and security studies and has recently published a book in French on the Iranian revolution, Le Marécage des Ayatollahs, prized by the Académie française. He has a PhD in political science from McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Dr. Guangyi Pan is a Lecturer in International Political Studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW Canberra. His research focuses on asymmetric politics, China’s alignment policies, and realism of International Relations. He has published two books and several articles in leading journals, including International Affairs, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Pacific Review, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, and The Chinese Journal of Political Science. He received his PhD in International Politics from UNSW Sydney in 2024. Previously, he studied at Nanjing University and worked at UNICEF China.

Dr Naoise McDonagh is the Director, Master of Business Administration (MBA). Naoise publishes original research on international business and trade issues, including how domestic regulation, international trade agreements and geopolitics impact the international business environment. In addition, he teaches courses on international business at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in ECU's School of Business and Law. Before joining Edith Cowan University, Naoise was a Lecturer in international political economy for three years at the Institute for International Trade, University of Adelaide. He also served one year as President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, South Australia (2021-2022).

Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. You can reach him via email at bkampmark@gmail.com