Dr. Kei Hakata is a professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Seikei University, teaching international politics and security issues. After earning his doctorate in public law at the University of Nancy II in France, he worked for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His responsibilities there included bilateral diplomacy with African countries as well as the post-war reconstruction of Afghanistan. Since 2005, Dr. Hakata has been teaching full-time at Seikei University. He was also a visiting scholar at Ateneo de Manila University (The Philippines), Oxford University (U.K.), the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (Hungary), and most recently National Tsing Hua University (R.O.C. Taiwan). His recent publications include Indo-Pacific Strategies: Navigating Geopolitics at the Dawn of a New Age (co-edited with Brendon J. Cannon, Routledge, 2021) and its Japanese edition (Chuokoron Shinsha, 2022).