The EU in the volatile Indo-Pacific region

Dr. Hiski Haukkala is the Director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He is also an Adjunct Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland, and a Senior Research Associate at RAND Europe. Before joining FIIA in November 2024, he worked as a Professor of International Relations at Tampere University. Until spring 2024, Haukkala was the Secretary General and Chief of the Cabinet at the Office of the President of the Republic of Finland. Haukkala has previously held positions at the University of Turku, Tampere University, the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, as well as visiting positions at the University of Oxford, the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., the College of Europe in Natolin in Warsaw, the EU Institute of Security Studies in Paris, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London and the University of Stirling in Scotland. He is the author of numerous books and articles on EU foreign policy, Russia and international relations.

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.

Theresa Fallon is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies (CREAS) in Brussels. She is concurrently Non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Adjunct Professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, and a member of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.  Her current research is on EU-Asia relations, maritime security, transatlantic relations, and great power competition.

Alfred Gerstl is an international relations specialist, with a geographic focus on the Indo-Pacific and in particular Southeast Asia. He is President of CEIAS and an Associate Professor at the Department of Asian Studies at Palacky University Olomouc (Czech Republic). There he heads the EU-funded project “The EU in the volatile Indo-Pacific” (EUVIP; 2023-2025).

Paul O’Shea is an Associate Professor in East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University, specialising in international relations and security in East Asia. His research focuses on alliances, military bases, and regional security, with particular attention to Japan and its foreign and security policy.

Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki. Chen is one of the Editors of the highly-ranked Journal of Chinese Political Science. She is also board member of the Bratislava-based Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS). Within the EUVIP project, she is the Helsinki coordinator leading the preparatory research and providing supervision and counselling to junior and mid-career researchers.