Xiao Ren joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as visiting scholar for the 2022-2023 fall quarter. He serves as Professor at Fudan University, Institute of International Studies, as well as Director for the university's Center for the Study of Chinese Foreign Policy. While at APARC, he conducted research exploring ideas and ways for China and the U.S. to better manage their competition during the Biden administration and Xi Jinping's leadership.

Irene Kyoung was a Research Associate for the Korea Program and Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL) at Shorenstein APARC, where she supported research projects regarding Korean politics and society and US-China relations. Irene received her MA in Political Science from Columbia University and graduated with honors in Government and Legal Studies from Bowdoin College. 

Aidan Milliff joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as the 2022-2023 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia. 

Milliff obtained his Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a predoctoral fellow at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University, and a 2021-2022 USIP/Minerva Peace and Security Scholar. Aidan’s research combines computational social science and qualitative tools to answer questions about the cognitive, emotional, and social forces that shape political violence, migration, post-violence politics, and the politics of South Asia. His work appears or is forthcoming in journals and proceedings including AAAI, Journal of Peace Research, Political Behavior, as well as popular outlets including the Washington Post Monkey Cage Blog, War on the Rocks, and India’s Hindustan Times. Before MIT, Aidan was a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He holds a BA in political science and MA in international relations from the University of Chicago. He was born and raised in Colorado.

Aidan’s dissertation asks: in complex political violence scenarios, like inter-communal conflict in South Asia, what determines the strategies that people pursue to keep themselves safe? Aidan develops a political psychology theory, situational appraisal theory, which focuses on variation in individual interpretations of violent environments to explain civilian behavior. The dissertation first uses situational appraisal theory to explain the behavior of Indian Sikhs who encountered violence in rural insurgency and urban pogroms during the 1980s. Pairing original interviews with a novel method for applying multilingual text classification algorithms and automated video-analysis tools to analyze an archive of hundreds of oral history videos, the project shows that situational appraisals of control and predictability explain substantial variation in individuals’ choice of survival strategies when confronting violence.  The dissertation then demonstrates the generalizability of situational appraisal theory to international security domains, using a large survey experiment to show that control and predictability framing influences foreign policy preferences about hypothetical U.S.–China military confrontation.

At APARC, Aidan transformed his dissertation project into a book manuscript, and extend his ongoing research on decision-making, political violence, and Indian politics.

Laura M. Stone joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as Visiting Scholar and China Policy Fellow for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years. She currently serves the U.S. Department of State, recently as Deputy Coordinator for the Secretary's Office for COVID Response and Health Security. While at APARC, she conducted research with the China Program and Professor Jean Oi regarding contemporary China affairs and U.S.-China policy.

Professor Jia Qingguo joined the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as Visiting Scholar and Payne Distinguished Fellow for the 2022 fall quarter. He currently serves as Professor at the School of International Studies at Peking University. While at APARC, he conducted research on the state and future development of U.S.-China policy.

Stephen Kotkin is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Within FSI, Kotkin is based at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and is affiliated with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and The Europe Center. He is also the Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School), where he taught for 33 years. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley and has been conducting research in the Hoover Library & Archives for more than three decades.

Kotkin’s research encompasses geopolitics and authoritarian regimes in history and in the present. His publications include Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (Penguin, 2017) and Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (Penguin, 2014), two parts of a planned three-volume history of Russian power in the world and of Stalin’s power in Russia. He has also written a history of the Stalin system’s rise from a street-level perspective, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (University of California 1995); and a trilogy analyzing Communism’s demise, of which two volumes have appeared thus far: Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970–2000 (Oxford, 2001; rev. ed. 2008) and Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, with a contribution by Jan T. Gross (Modern Library, 2009). The third volume will be on the Soviet Union in the third world and Afghanistan. Kotkin’s publications and public lectures also often focus on Communist China.

Kotkin has participated in numerous events of the National Intelligence Council, among other government bodies, and is a consultant in geopolitical risk to Conexus Financial and Mizuho Americas. He served as the lead book reviewer for the New York Times Sunday Business Section for a number of years and continues to write reviews and essays for Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Wall Street Journal, among other venues. He has been an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Julia Tao Wei is a global affiliate visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2022-23. Wei has worked in the financial industry for over 20 years and has vast experiences across a variety of financial products including commercial banking business, corporate finance, cross-border M&A, derivative products, private equity and asset management.  Since 2015, as a founding partner, Wei has led the Discovery Capital (Hong Kong) team focusing on non-performing asset investments and maintained partnership of the family office of Winsome Group (Hong Kong). Her previous experience included many years at investment banks such as Mizuho Bank, UBS, BNP Paribas and BOCGI. We is an active social activist, member of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, and advisor of think tanks, including D&C Think Tank. She received her bachelor's degree of economics from Hangzhou Dianzi University and studied in an MBA program at Waseda University in Tokyo. She is fluent in Mandarin, English and Japanese.

Jitukrushna Swain is a global affiliate visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2022-23. Swain has over thirteen years of experience in business development, core scientific research and project management of pharmaceutical products and has been with Reliance Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., India since 2015. Currently, he is designated as Senior Manager in the Corporate Development team. His current responsibilities include business development for international regulated market (including out-licensing deals for Finished Dose Formulations and client management); cross-functional coordination for product registration and market launch; portfolio management; sales and distribution network development for pharmaceutical products; and supporting the international clients by query response to techno-commercial requirements. Swain received his master's degree in bio-technology with specialization in industrial microbiology and fermentation technology from Sambualpur University, India in 2009.

Makoto Shishido is a global affiliate visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2022-23 and 2023-24. Shishido served various positions at the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MoF), Cabinet Secretariat and Cabinet Office (CAO) and assumed several tasks related to Japanese economic policy during his career. Before joining Shorenstein APARC, Shishido served as the Deputy Director for Basic Principles on Fiscal management at CAO since 2021 where he was responsible for "Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform". Prior to that, Shishido was a Section Chief of Growth Strategy, Council Bureau at Cabinet Secretariat from 2020 to 2021. He worked on economic growth strategy of Japanese government and dealt with many questions from Diet members for "Go To Campaign", which is one of the demand stimulation measures for industry affected by COVID-19. Shishido earned his Bachelor of Law from Kyoto University in 2012 and his Master of Public Policy from Kyoto University in 2015.