Kristi Govella

Dr. Kristi Govella (クリスティ・ゴヴェラ) is the inaugural Director of the Center for Indo-Pacific Affairs and an Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Beginning in Fall 2024, she will be an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. She specializes in the intersection of economics, security, and governance in international relations, with a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific region and Japan. Dr. Govella’s research has examined topics such as economic statecraft, trade, investment, government-business relations, regional institutional architecture, military alliances, and the governance of the global commons. She has published numerous articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces, and she is the co-editor of two books, Linking Trade and Security: Evolving Institutions and Strategies in Asia, Europe, and the United States (2013) and Responding to a Resurgent Russia: Russian Policy and Responses from the European Union and the United States (2012). She also serves as an Adjunct Fellow at the East-West Center and Pacific Forum and as Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Asia Policy. Dr. Govella was previously Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Asia Program at The German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, and an Associate Professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. She has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo and Waseda University. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in Political Science and Japanese from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is of Filipino and Italian descent and is professionally proficient in Japanese.