Seminar Abstract

East Asia is a region of signal importance for global order because of its economic dynamism and growing heft, China’s challenge to the United States as incumbent hegemon, and conflict hotspots like the Korean peninsula. Studying the IR of East Asia requires academic analysis that both appreciates the subtleties inherent to this region, and can relate them to the wider systemic context. Moreover, as a region deeply characterized by duality, hybridity and contingency, East Asia does not easily lend itself to mainstream IR theories that privilege simplification, dichotomies, and distinct levels of analysis. This seminar presents a new research prospectus geared specifically at studying the IR of East Asia and its often apparently contradictory trends. It proposes a Conjunctions Analytical Framework that explores what happens at the intersections of the regional-global and the unit-regional/global levels of analysis — the ‘grey areas’ where social formations meet and interact. This new prospectus aims to help shape future research into the IR of East Asia, by proposing more effective ways of analyzing the complex reality of East Asia’s regional and global politics.

About the Speaker

Evelyn Goh is the Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at the Australian National University, where she is also the Director of Research at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. Her expertise is Asian security and international relations, in theory and practice. She is internationally known as a scholar who uniquely combines empirical rigour and theoretical innovation. She is a regional expert in the sense that she studies China, the U.S., Northeast and Southeast Asia.

Professor Goh has published widely on U.S.-China diplomatic history and contemporary strategic relations; East Asian security cooperation and institutions; Southeast Asian strategies towards great powers; and environmental security. Her key publications include The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia (Oxford University Press, 2013); ‘Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia: Analyzing Regional Security Strategies’ in the leading academic journal International Security (Winter 2007/8); and Constructing the US-China Rapprochement, 1961-1974 (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Most recently, she edited Rising China’s Influence in Developing Asia (Oxford University Press, 2016). She is currently finalising a book manuscript on Re-thinking Sino-Japanese Alienation (co-authored with Barry Buzan).

Evelyn moved to Australia in August 2013, and has held previous faculty positions at Royal Holloway University of London; the University of Oxford; and the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. She holds Masters (1999) and Doctoral (2001) degrees in International Relations and an undergraduate degree in Geography (1996), all from the University of Oxford. She also obtained a Masters in Environment & Development from Cambridge (1997). She is Singaporean, and received a President’s Scholarship in 1993