2009 Cohort I Participants
Please note that the position and affiliation of each individual are from the time of application.
Daniel P. Aldrich is an assistant professor of political science at Purdue University. Aldrich has focused on the ways in which state agencies interact with contentious civil society over the siting of controversial facilities such as nuclear power plants, airports, and dams through his critically acclaimed book Site Fights (Cornell University Press 2008 and 2010). His current research investigates how neighborhoods and communities recover from disasters. He has published a number of peer-reviewed articles along with research for general audiences. His research has been funded by grants from the Abe Foundation, IIE Fulbright Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Reischauer Institute at Harvard University, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Harvard’s Center for European Studies. Aldrich has been a visiting scholar at the Japanese Ministry of Finance, the Institute for Social Science at Tokyo University, Harvard University, the Tata Institute for Social Science in Mumbai and the Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). He has spent more than three years conducting fieldwork in Japan, India and France. Aldrich received his PhD and MA in political science from Harvard University, an MA from the University of California at Berkeley, and his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
James Gannon is executive director of the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE/USA), the American affiliate of one of the leading nongovernmental institutions in the field of international affairs in Japan. JCIE brings together key figures from around the world for programs of exchange, research, and dialogue designed to build international cooperation on pressing regional and global challenges. Before joining JCIE in 2001, Gannon conducted macroeconomic and political research with the New York office of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the Japanese government’s overseas economic assistance agency. He has also worked with the Donald Keene Center for Japanese Culture and taught English in rural Japanese middle schools for two years as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. Gannon graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a BA in government, conducted graduate research on postwar Japanese economic history at Ehime University in Japan, and received a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he focused on U.S.-Asia relations. He has written about international affairs for American and Japanese publications.
Mary Alice Haddad is an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, where she teaches government and East Asian studies. She has received awards from numerous institutions including the Harvard Academy, Mellon Foundation, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, East Asia Institute, and Japan Foundation. Her publications include a book, Politics and Volunteering in Japan: A Global Perspective (Cambridge 2007), and articles in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and Journal of Asian Studies. She is currently completing a manuscript on Japanese democratization. Haddad received her PhD and MA in political science from the University of Washington and her BA from Amherst College.
Kenneth Haig is presently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Program on U.S.-Japan Relations and will join the faculty at Bard College as an assistant professor in political studies beginning in August 2010. He received his AB in history from Harvard and his MA and PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He has also been affiliated with Keio University, Hokkaido University, and the Otaru University of Commerce during previous years of fieldwork in Japan under Fulbright (IIE), Fulbright-Hays, and JSPS research fellowships. Haig is currently revising his dissertation on the comparative politics of immigrant integration in Japan and East Asia as a book manuscript, and has begun work on a new research project comparing East Asian democracies’ varied policy responses to the political challenges posed by aging and shrinking populations. His recent publications include a chapter on Japanese immigration policy in Routledge’s forthcoming Handbook of Japanese Politics (Alisa Gaunder ed., 2010).
Llewelyn Hughes is assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University (GWU). His research focuses on international and comparative political economy, including the exploration of how governments and firms behave in resource markets and the political economy of climate change. He also publishes on the topic of international relations of Northeast Asia and Japanese politics. Prior to joining the faculty at GWU, Hughes was research fellow in the Consortium for Energy Policy Research at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Before entering academia, Hughes was employed in the public and private sectors in Tokyo, Japan. From 1997-2001 he acted as international aide and interpreter to Ichiro Ozawa, Secretary General of Japan’s governing Democratic Party of Japan. In the private sector he advised firms operating in the energy, telecommunications, retail and aerospace sectors in Japan on the management of government and public relations. Hughes has a Master’s degree from the University of Tokyo and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kathryn Ibata-Arens, is an associate professor in the department of political science at DePaul University in Chicago. Ibata-Arens specializes in international and comparative political economy, entrepreneurship policy, high technology policy and Japanese political economy. Her dissertation research was conducted at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo as a Fulbright Doctoral Fellow. Ibata-Arens’ current research examines emerging life science (biotechnology and medical devices) regions in Japan and the United States. Her findings are presented in the book manuscript, Clustering to Win: Firm, Regional and National Strategies in Life Science Entrepreneurship. Ibata-Arens was a JSPS post-doctoral fellow (2002-2003) at the Center for Advanced Economic Engineering (AEE), University of Tokyo and was a fellow in the Alfred P. Sloan/Social Science Research Council Program on the Corporation as a Social Institution (2002). In 2005 and 2006 she was a Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership Abe Research Fellow in the Faculty of Commerce, Doshisha University, Kyoto. In 2008, Ibata-Arens was a Japan Policy Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, D.C. She recently received a Sloan Foundation Industry Studies Grant for her work on national entrepreneurship and innovation policy. Ibata-Arens’ book Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan: Politics, Organizations and High Technology Firms (Cambridge University Press, 2005) analyzes high technology firms and regional economies in Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo. Other works, on enterprise embeddedness and entrepreneurial business networks, appear in journals including Enterprise and Society and Journal of Asian Business and Management. Ibata-Arens is currently a Fulbright New Century Scholar at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. Dr. Ibata-Arens received a PhD from Northwestern University and a BA from Loyola University Chicago.
Jennifer Lind is assistant professor in the Department of Government, Dartmouth College. Lind is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, a book that examines the effect of war memory on international reconciliation (Cornell University Press, 2008). She has also authored scholarly articles in International Security and Security Studies, and has written for wider audiences in The Atlantic and Foreign Affairs. Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense, and has lived and worked in Japan. Her current research interests include the resilience of the North Korean regime, planning for U.S. military missions in the event of North Korean collapse, and energy competition and its security implications for East Asia. She received a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Master of Pacific and International Affairs degree from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Phillip Y. Lipscy is an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University and FSI Center Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center. His fields of research include Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, international and comparative political economy, international security, and regional cooperation in East and South East Asia. Lipscy is an expert on bargaining over unbalanced representation in international organizations such as the United Nations Security Council, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. His most recent research examines the domestic politics of energy efficiency and global climate change. He has also written on a wide range of topics such as the use of secrecy in international policy making, the effect of domestic politics on trade, and Japanese responses to the Asian financial crisis. Lipscy obtained his PhD in political science at Harvard University. He received his MA in international policy studies and BA in economics and political science at Stanford University. His previous affiliations include the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for Global and International Studies at The George Washington University, the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo.
Mark Manyin is a specialist in Asian affairs at the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a non-partisan agency that provides information and analysis to members of the U.S. Congress and their staff. At CRS, Manyin’s general area of expertise is U.S. relations with East Asia, particularly Japan, the Koreas, and Vietnam. He also has tracked the evolution of terrorism in Southeast Asia and the environmental causes of security tensions in Asia. From 2006-2008, Manyin served as the head of the CRS’ 11-person Asia Section, overseeing the Service’s research on East, Southeast, and South Asia as well as Australasia and the Pacific Islands. Prior to joining CRS in 1999, Manyin completed his PhD in Japanese trade policy and negotiating behavior at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He has written academic articles on Vietnam and Korea, taught courses in East Asian international relations, worked as a business consultant, and lived in Japan for a total of three years.
Matthew Marr is an assistant professor of sociology for the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, Asian Studies Program at Florida International University. Marr’s research focuses on the process of exiting homelessness in Tokyo and Los Angeles, exploring how it is shaped by contexts operating at multiple levels of social analysis, from the global to the individual. He plans to continue to research poverty in Japan and the U.S. from a global, comparative perspective, looking at the effects of settings of social service delivery, mental health policy, gentrification, and increased policing in areas where homeless persons and services for them concentrate. Marr began studying Japanese at Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, California. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1993 with degrees in government and Japanese studies and spent two years studying Japanese language and culture in Nagoya. He earned an MA degree in sociology from Howard University in 1997 and has worked with community based organizations to address homelessness in Los Angeles and Tokyo. He received his PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2007, with a focus on ethnographic research methods and social stratification.
Sherry L. Martin is an assistant professor jointly appointed in the Government Department and the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University. Martin is interested in mass participation in politics, public opinion, electoral institutions, political socialization, and gender and politics in Japan and the United States. Her research on the relationship between gender, a decline in partisanship, and widespread feelings of political alienation in contemporary Japanese politics has appeared in the Social Science Japan Journal and the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. Her co-edited book, Democratic Reform in Japan: Assessing the Impact, was published by Lynne Rienner Publishers in 2008. Martin is currently completing a book, under contract with Cornell University Press, that examines how institutional changes combined with new patterns of citizen engagement to create the conditions for higher levels of electoral participation that might be expected throughout a period of Japanese politics led by an entrenched elite widely criticized for being unresponsive to voters. Martin is beginning a new project that examines the relationship between lifelong learning programs and political participation in mature democracies. Martin earned her AB in politics from Princeton University and her PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan.
Robert Pekkanen is chair of the Japan Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He received his PhD in political science from Harvard University in 2002. He has published articles on Japanese politics in such journals as The American Political Science Review, The British Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Asian Studies, and The Journal of Japanese Studies, among others. His first book, Japan’s Dual Civil Society: Members without Advocates (Stanford, 2006) won the Ohira Prize in 2008 and an award from the Japanese Nonprofit Research Association (JANPORA) in 2007. The Japan Times also featured it as one of the “Best Asia Books” of 2006. A Japanese translation appeared in 2008. With lead editor Benjamin L. Read, he edited a volume on local organizations published by Routledge in 2009. His third book, Neighborhood Associations and Governance in Japan, appeared the same year (co-authored in Japanese with Yutaka Tsujinaka and Hidehiro Yamamoto). Pekkanen’s fourth book departs from the theme of civil society and associational life to examine party organization and theories of institutional change and origin through the case of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party. The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Parties as Institutions will be published by Cornell University Press in 2010, co-authored with Ellis S. Krauss. Pekkanen is currently co-PI on a major research projected funded by the National Science Foundation to investigate parties’ nomination strategies and legislative organization in eight countries. Pekkanen has interviewed over 50 members of the Japanese Diet, and shadowed several in the past few elections. He has been interviewed by media including PBS’s “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,” The Christian Science Monitor, Asahi Shimbun (Japan), USA Today, and radio programs in the U.S., China, Jamaica and Australia.
Kay Shimizu is assistant professor of political science at Columbia University. During the 2009-2010 academic year, she is on leave at Harvard University as an Advanced Research Fellow at the Program on US-Japan Relations. Shimizu’s research examines Japanese and Chinese political economy, with a focus on public finance and financial institutions. She is the co-editor of Political Change in Japan (with Steven R. Reed and Kenneth Mori McElwain, Brookings, 2009), which includes her two co-authored chapters. She earned her BA in economics and international relations, MA in international policy studies and PhD in political science from Stanford University.
Mireya Solís is associate professor at the School of International Service of American University. Her research interests include international and comparative political economy, Japanese politics and foreign policy, and regional integration in East Asia and North America. Solís authored Banking on Multinationals: Public Credit and the Export of Japanese Sunset Industries (Stanford University Press, 2004), and is co-editor of Cross-Regional Trade Agreements: Understanding Fragmented Regionalism in East Asia (Springer, 2008), and Competitive Regionalism: Explaining the Diffusion and Implications of FTAs in the Pacific Rim (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009). Solis has been awarded a fellowship for advanced social research on Japan by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission as well as an Abe Fellowship by the Center for Global Partnership and the Social Science Research Council. Acting as principal investigator, Solís received a grant from CGP for the project Competitive Regionalism: Strategic Dynamics of FTA Negotiation in East Asia and Beyond. Solís has published articles in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, The World Economy, Pacific Affairs, Business and Politics, Journal of East Asian Studies, and Asian Economic Policy Review, as well as several book chapters. Solís has received numerous prizes and academic distinctions, including the Young Scholar Award from the Association of Japanese Business Studies, Fulbright and Ford Foundation scholarships, and fellowships from the Institute of Advanced Studies of the United Nations University in Tokyo, the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the UCSD, and the U.S.-Japan Relations Program at Harvard University. Solis received her BA from El Colegio de Mexico and her PhD and MA from Harvard University.
Nicholas Szechenyi is deputy director of the Japan Chair at CSIS, where he is also a fellow. His research focuses on U.S.-Japan relations and U.S.–East Asia relations. Prior to joining CSIS in 2005, he was a news producer for Fuji Television in Washington, D.C., where he covered U.S. policy in Asia and domestic politics.
Szechenyi coauthors a quarterly review of U.S.-Japan relations in Comparative Connections, an electronic journal on East Asian bilateral relations. Other publications include “A Turning Point for Japan’s Self Defense Forces,” Washington Quarterly (Autumn 2006), and “Common Values: A New Agenda for U.S.-Japan Relations (with Michael Green), Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (Summer/Fall 2006). Szechenyi received an MA in international economics and Japan studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a BA in Asian studies from Connecticut College. He lived in Japan for six years and speaks fluent Japanese.