Dr Thomas S. Wilkins a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute affiliated with the Washington DC Office.

He currently directs the Master of International Relations and Master of International Security degree programs at the Department of Government and International Relations (GIR) at the University of Sydney. There he lectures in subjects such as Australian Foreign & Security Policy, Strategy and Security in the Asia-Pacific and Alliances & Coalition Warfare.

His academic research focuses on strategic affairs in the Indo-Pacific, especially Australia-Japan bilateralism, and the US-alliance network. His work has been published in journals such as Asia Policy, Security Challenges, and Asian Security, with his latest monograph Security in Asia-Pacific: The Dynamics of Alignment, appearing with Lynne Rienner Press (2019).

From 2018-2022 Dr Wilkins was a Senior Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) thinktank in Tokyo. He worked to produce a portfolio of Policy Briefs addressing security and historical issues for the Japan Information Centre (JIC) and has also authored reports for the MacDonald Laurier Institute (MLI) and Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (Brussels), as well as serving as a Regular Contributor to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s International Information Network Analysis.

Dr Wilkins holds a Ph.D in International Security from the University of Birmingham (and was an Exchange Student for one year at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington DC). He also Holds an M.Phil in Asian Studies from the University of Sydney, and a Master of International Relations and Bachelors in History from Birmingham. He spent a further two years in the US as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of San Francisco Center for Asia-Pacific Studies, and as POSCO Fellow at the East West Center, Honolulu. He has since been awarded fellowships from the Japan Foundation and Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences to conduct research in Tokyo, and has taught at Tokyo, Keio and Meiji Universities as a Visiting Professor. He was formerly on the Editorial Team of the journals Pacific Affairs and Japanese Studies.