I am Associate Professor in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University, and Deputy Director (Research) in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.

Through a Westpac Research Fellowship and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship, I currently lead a team researching China's role in shaping the international economic order.

My book, China-Japan Relations after World War Two: Empire, Industry and War, 1949-1971 (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explains how and why Japan became China’s most important economic partner in the aftermath of major war, and at a time when the two countries were still Cold War opponents. The book is based on hundreds of declassified documents from the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive, gathered during fieldwork in China between 2008 and 2012.

I received my D.Phil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where I studied as a Rhodes Scholar. My doctoral thesis was awarded Oxford's 2013 Dasturzada Dr Jal Pavry Memorial Prize, and in 2017 I won the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia's Paul Bourke Award for an early career researcher who has attained outstanding achievements in the social sciences. I completed my M.Phil in Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, and B.A. Hons (First Class) in International Studies and B.Bus in International Business at the University of South Australia.

I have undertaken intensive language study and fieldwork in China, Japan and Taiwan over the past 15 years, and engage regularly with the Australian policy community on issues of contemporary foreign and security policy.

For more information about my research, publications, and areas of research supervision (PhD, Masters and Honours students) please visit my personal website.