Ja Ian Chong

Ja Ian Chong (莊嘉穎) holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and received his Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University. His research focuses on security issues pertaining to China and the Asia-Pacific but crosses international relations, comparative politics, political sociology, and history. Ian previously worked with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore, the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, and served as an infantry officer in the Singapore Armed Forces. His English and Chinese publications have appeared in Security Studies, Twentieth Century China, Journal of East Asian Studies, Asian Affairs, China Review International, the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies Working Paper Series, as well as edited volumes and newspapers.

Ian is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. His book, Imposing States: External Intervention and State Formation in China, Indonesia, Thailand, 1893-1952, is published by Cambridge University Press and received the 2014 Best Book Award given by the International Securities Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

Ian is currently working on projects examining how collective responses to power transtion by non-leading powers may affect regional order, the uses and misuses of historical data in international relations research on China and its implications, how political liberalisation may affect alliance politics, and the effects of political decentralisation on Qing external relations during the Boxer Episode (1899-1901).