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, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). 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 India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025); Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

Mark R. Peattie was a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was a professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and was the John A. Burns Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the University of Hawai'i in 1995.

Peattie was a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history. His current research focused on the historical context of Japanese-Southeast Asian relations. He was also directing a pioneering and international collaborative effort of the military history of the study of the Sino-Japanese war of 1937–45 being sponsored by the Asia Center at Harvard University.

He is editor, with Peter Duus and Ramon H. Myers, of the Japanese Wartime Empire, 1937–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1996). Peattie is the author of the Japanese Colonial Empire: The Vicissitudes of Its Fifty-Year History (Tokyo: Yomiuri Press, 1996).

He coauthored, with David Evans, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Naval Institute Press, 1997), winner of a 1999 Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History. A sequel, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2001.

Peattie is also the author of the monograph A Historian Looks at the Pacific War (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, 1995).

Peattie was a reader for Columbia University, University of California, University of Hawai'i, Stanford University, University of Michigan, and U.S. Naval Institute Presses.

Peattie frequently served as lecturer in the Stanford University Continuing Studies Program and in the Stanford Alumni Travel Program.

He was named an associate in research at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University from 1982 to 1993.

He was a member of the U.S. Information Agency from 1955 to 1968 with service in Cambodia (1955–57), in Japan (Sendai, Tokyo, Kyoto, 1958–67), and in Washington, D.C. (1967–68).

Peattie held a PhD in Japanese history from Princeton University.