David Arulanantham, a Stanford alumnus, was a Robert and Marion Oster National Security Affairs Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2023-2024. A career Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State since 2005, David has more than two decades of experience living in and working on the countries of the Indo-Pacific region. During his time at the Department of State, he has also served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff. David has a Masters in International Relations from Oxford University, and a Bachelor's in International Relations and Political Science from Stanford University where he published articles on Indian foreign policy. David is involved in several public service and mentoring initiatives and can speak French, Hindi, Tamil and Bengali.
Paul Y. Chang is the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Association Senior Fellow at Shorenstein APARC; Senior Fellow at FSI; and Professor by courtesy in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. Chang also serves as the Deputy Director of the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC and the President of the Association of Korean Sociologists in America. He is the author of Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea’s Democracy Movement, 1970-1979 (Stanford University Press) and co-editor of South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (Routledge). His current work examines the diversification of family structures in South Korea. Before joining Stanford, Chang served on the faculty at Harvard University, Yonsei University, and the Singapore Management University.
Thomas J. Christensen is James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations and Director of the China and the World Program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Pritzker Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He was previously William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics at Princeton University. From 2006-2008 he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs with responsibility for relations with China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. His research and teaching focus on China’s foreign relations, the international relations of East Asia, and international security. He has also taught at Cornell University and MIT. He received his B.A. from Haverford College, M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He was presented with a Distinguished Public Service Award by the United States Department of State.
Susan D. Hyde, an expert on democracy promotion and international political institutions, is the Robson Professor of Political Science at University of California, Berkeley, where she served as Chair of the Department of Political Science (AY 2021-2024) and is currently Co-director of the Institute of International Studies (2021-present). Her research focuses on threats to democracy, the role of regime type in international affairs, and international influences on the domestic politics of sovereign states. Hyde is a political scientist whose research examines threats to democracy, the role of regime type in international affairs, and international influences on the domestic politics of sovereign states, particularly in authoritarian regimes and transitional democracies. She has served on editorial boards of leading political science journals and has been a residential scholar at the Brookings Institution and Princeton's Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance.
Gidong Kim currently serves as Associate Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies' Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, and he joins as Visiting Scholar, SNAPLFellow for the summer of 2025. Previously, he was Korea Program Postdoctoral Fellow at APARC beginning August 2023 until February 2025. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Missouri, as well as both a M.A. and a B.A. in Political Science from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. He studies comparative political behavior and economy in East Asia, with particular focus on nationalism and identity politics, inequality and redistribution, and migration in South Korea and East Asia. His work is published or forthcoming in journals including Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Asian Perspective, Korea Observer, and Social Science Quarterly. His dissertation, “Nationalism and Redistribution in New Democracies: Nationalist Legacies of Authoritarian Regimes,” investigates the micro-level underpinnings that sustain weak welfare system in developmental states.
Xinru Ma's research focuses on nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security with a methodological focus on formal and computational methods. More broadly, Xinru’s research encompasses three main objectives: Substantively, she aims to better theorize and enhance cross-country perspectives on critical phenomena such as nationalism and its impact on international security; Methodologically, she strives to improve measurement and causal inference based on careful methodologies, including formal modeling and computational methods like natural language processing; Empirically, she challenges prevailing assumptions that inflate the perceived risk of militarized conflicts in East Asia, by providing original data and analysis rooted in local knowledge and regional perceptions. Her work has been published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, The Washington Quarterly, the Journal of Global Security Studies, and the Journal of European Public Policy, and in edited volumes through Palgrave. Her book, Beyond Power Transitions: The Lessons of East Asian History and the Future of U.S.-China Relations, was recently published by Columbia University Press. At SNAPL, Xinru leads the research track in collaborative projects focused on U.S.–Asia relations
Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology; senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2005; and the founding director of the Korea Program since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the new Taiwan Program at APARC. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations. In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and published by Stanford University Press in June 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.
Piero A. Tozzi is currently the Deputy Staff Director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, having served as Staff Director in the 118th Congress. His previous positions include Republican Staff Director of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and Staff Director and Counsel for the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations. He has also served as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor and Counsel to Representative Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ). Mr. Tozzi received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and his B.A. from Columbia University. Mr. Tozzi speaks Mandarin Chinese, and is the author of several works on international law and comparative constitutional law, including Constitutional Reform on Taiwan: Fulfilling a Chinese Notion of Democratic Sovereignty.
FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
