Great powers and grand infrastructure initiatives in the era of Indo-Pacific

Katja Creutz is Programme Director of the Global Security and Governance research programme. She is also an Affiliated Research Fellow with the Erik Castrén Institute at the University of Helsinki. Her main field of expertise is international law and especially issues of responsibility, human rights and global governance. Dr Creutz holds a Doctor of Laws degree (2015) and a Master of Laws programme degree from the University of Helsinki (2004) and a Master of Political Science from Åbo Akademi University (2000).

Creutz has previously worked as Research Fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights of the University of Helsinki. She is the former Executive Editor of the Finnish Yearbook of International Law. She has published extensively on responsibility in international law, non-state actors, human rights and Nordic issues.

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Saori N. Katada is the Louis G. Lancaster Chair of International Relations at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Political Science.  Previous to her current appointment at UCSB, she was Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Her 2026 book with Kei Koga, Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World, was published by Oxford University Press. Her single-authored books include: Japan’s New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific (Columbia University Press, 2020), and Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (University of Michigan Press, 2001), which received the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Award.  She served as the vice president of the International Studies Association and on the editorial team of the Review of International Political Economy. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).

Mikael Mattlin is a Research Professor and the leader of Center on Global Orders and China (CORD) at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA). He served as the Acting Director and Acting Deputy Director of FIIA in 2024. He holds the Title of Docent in Political Science, especially East Asian Politics, from the University of Turku (2013).

Prior to joining FIIA, Mattlin worked as a Professor of Political Science (2021–22), Senior Lecturer of International Politics and TIAS Collegium Researcher at the University of Turku, as well as Professor of Chinese Studies (2018–19) and University Lecturer in World Politics at the University of Helsinki.

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Bart Gaens is Senior Research Fellow in the Global Security and Governance research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. From May 2021 to April 2023, he led a project on connectivity in the Indo-Pacific region. He also holds the title of Docent at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki.

In the past Gaens has worked as Project Director for FIIA’s Center on US Politics and Power (CUSPP), Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Helsinki, and Specially-Appointed Associate Professor at Osaka University in Japan.

He has published widely on Europe-Asia inter-regionalism and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process, Japan’s foreign policy and regional role, India’s foreign policy and relations with the EU, domestic politics in Myanmar, and security-related issues in the Indo-Pacific region. He has also (co)edited volumes and reports on connectivity, EU-Asia relations, the US-China rivalry, transatlantic relations, and Japan’s search for strategic partnerships.

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