Speakers:
*This is a collaborative project of four researchers, and Yuan and Tomoko will be at the venue in person.

Yuan Zhou is a Research Associate at Graduate School of Law, Kobe University. He specializes in international relations and political communication, focusing on China. His work has been published or is forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Chinese Political Science, Social Science Computer Review, Asian Journal of Communication, Journal of Human Rights, among others. He holds a PhD in political science from Kobe University.

Raphaëlle Khan is an Assistant Professor at the City College of New York- CUNY and an Associate at the Harvard Asia Center. She works at the intersection of International Relations and Global History, with a particular focus on non-Western perspectives in international relations, decolonisation, and the Indo-Pacific region.

Juan Acevedo is a PhD student in political science at the City University of New York. His research lies in the intersection between IOs, IPE, and the Global South.

Tomoko Takahashi is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University. In the field of International Relations, she studies international institutions from the perspective of states, and especially focuses on China and the Global South. She holds a PhD from the University of Tokyo.

Discussant:
Alanna O’Malley is Associate Professor of International History at Leiden University in The Netherlands and an expert in the United Nations, the Global South and the history of international relations. She is Principal Investigator of the project: “Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within, the Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South,” funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council. 

Summary:
New trade friction and wars that have erupted over the past few years have led some analysts to argue that the world was witnessing the emergence of a “new Cold War.” In this new and fast-changing context, competing major powers appear to vie for support from other countries worldwide and compete for legitimacy. Particularly noteworthy here are the countries of the so-called “Global South,” which are increasingly courted by Western countries as diplomatic partners. While there have been several quantitative analyses of the alliance situations of various countries in multilateral diplomacy, questions arise as to whether China and India, which are considered as potential alternative global leaders to Western countries, view them as a unified group or not and what kind of international order they envision. The project has two main objectives: first, it aims to elucidate how China and India have strategically related to the concept of the “Global South” in their global, regional, and bilateral diplomacy over the past ten years. Second, this project will analyze the relationship between India, China, and the US in this order. Through quantitative text analysis and qualitative research (including interviews and archival research), four researchers will jointly investigate these questions by combining their expertise and the strength of their universities. The City University of New York is very close to the United Nations and hosts the Ralph Bunche Institute, which has produced extensive collaborative research with the UN. Kobe University places a great emphasis on global governance studies, and Kyoto University gathers experts on Global South countries.

Contact: Tomoko Takahashi (takahashi-t [at] cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp)