Kristi Govella, assistant professor in the Asian Studies Program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, has been selected as a 2019 Fellow with the National Asia Research Program (NARP).
Govella is currently working on a number of issues that are vital to understanding the rapidly changing security environment in Asia, including the militarization of space and cyberspace, maritime security, regional institutional architecture, and recent Japanese security reforms. Govella will continue to teach in the Asian Studies Program during the tenure of the fellowship.
She holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, where she specialized in international relations, comparative politics and East Asia, with a focus on Japan. She has published widely on issues involving the intersection of trade and security in Asia.
NARP fellows are expected to contribute policy-relevant research on national security issues for a one-year term. The fellowship includes a research stipend, participation in conferences with senior Asia experts and policymakers and opportunities for publication and policy engagement.
NARP is jointly run by the National Bureau of Asian Research, a think tank whose research into policy issues in the Indo-Pacific has shaped legislation and foreign policy for more than 30 years, and by the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. The NARP selection committee chose 20 fellows through a competitive nationwide process.