Leif-Eric Easley

Leif-Eric Easley is the 2010-11 Northeast Asian History Fellow at Shorenstein APARC. Dr. Easley completed his Ph.D. at the Harvard University Department of Government in 2010, specializing in East Asian international relations. His dissertation presents a theory of national identity perceptions, bilateral trust between governments, and patterns of security cooperation, based on extensive fieldwork in Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing.

While at Shorenstein APARC, Easley will engage in research and writing for a book manuscript on nationalism and strategic trust in Northeast Asia. He will also teach a course addressing issues of national identity and contested history, with focus on implications for the international relations of Japan, China, South Korea, and the United States.

Easley completed his B.A. in political science with a minor in mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he graduated summa cum laude and senior of the year with a thesis on Theater Missile Defense in Asia. He was a long-time affiliate of the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) and was Japan area editor for the Harvard Asia Quarterly. He served as a teaching fellow at Harvard in the subjects of Asian international relations and American foreign policy and was advisor for a senior thesis on historical memory and foreign policy in Asia. He was also a visiting scholar at Yonsei University and the University of Southern California's Korean Studies Institute.

Easley regularly speaks at international conferences and is actively involved in high-level U.S.-Asia exchanges (Track II diplomacy) as a Kelly Fellow with the Pacific Forum-Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His research appears in a variety of academic journals, supplemented by commentaries in major newspapers.