John Nilsson-Wright

John Nilsson-Wright (formerly Swenson-Wright) is senior university lecturer at Cambridge University and an official fellow at Darwin College; he also is concurrently senior research fellow for Northeast Asia and Korea Foundation Korea Fellow with the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. He was head of the Chatham House Asia Programme from March 2014 to October 2016 and is a graduate of Christ Church and St. Antony’s College, Oxford and SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on Cold War history focusing on US-Japan alliance ties, and the contemporary international relations and politics of Northeast Asia, with reference to Japan and the Koreas.

In his policy work, he focuses on regional security and the changing nature of alliance relations in East Asia, and at Chatham House he coordinates a project on Korea’s regional and global role, having recently completed a similar study on UK-Japan relations.

He is currently writing a monograph on populism and identity politics as a contemporary and historical phenomenon in both Europe and Northeast Asia.