Associate Partners

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Associate Partners

1.         National Maritime Foundation

Website: https://maritimeindia.org/

The National Maritime Foundation (NMF), New Delhi, was established in 2005 as the nation’s first maritime think-tank for conducting independent and policy-relevant research on ‘matters maritime’. It was inaugurated by the then Defence Minister of India Sh. Pranab Mukherjee, (later the President of India) on 15 February 2005. While it is an autonomous think-tank, its intellectual and organisational development is supported by the Ministry of Defence and the Indian Navy. Since its inception, the NMF has grown from a fledgling organisation into an established intellectual institution with robust academic linkages within the country and overseas. The Foundation provides an open forum for professional debate amongst the various stakeholders within India’s maritime domain, while serving to heighten maritime awareness amongst India’s policy-makers and intellectual elite, as also civil society at large.

Our research also addresses a wide range of important economic-, socio-economic-, socio-cultural-, scientific-, legal-, and historical issues, all of which are critical to ‘maritime India’.  These include, amongst others, fleshing-out the vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), providing specificity to the ‘Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative’ (IPOI), developing policy-relevant approaches to the polar regions,  pushing India’s efforts to improve maritime connectivity through a variety of bilateral, trilateral, mini-lateral and multilateral maritime constructs, and, supporting a national and regional transition to a Blue Economy. 

Dr Gupreet Kurana

Captain Gurpreet Khurana, PhD, is a missile specialist and a ship’s diver of the Indian Navy. His 28 years of commissioned service include command of two warships, Principal Warfare and Missile Officer of three Missile Corvettes and participation in Op Pawan (Sri Lanka) & Op Vijay (Kargil). His staff appointments include Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence at Naval Headquarters, New Delhi and Staff Officer to Vice Chief of Naval Staff. After commissioning the Fast Attack Craft INS Tarmugli at Port Blair in 2002 as it first Commanding Officer, he joined the IDSA for a five-year Research Fellowship. He is accredited with the first use of the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ (in 2006-07) in context of strategic/ geo-political academic discourse in India. In early 2009, he joined the Maritime Doctrine and Concept Centre (MDCC) at Mumbai. The same year, he was awarded the Naval Chief’s Commendation for revision of Indian Maritime Doctrine (2009). At MDCC, he authored strategy documents and concept papers on India’s Maritime strategy vis-à-vis China and Pakistan, and compiled the first ever Handbook on the Law of Maritime Operations for the Indian Navy in three volumes. He has contributed expert inputs for the formulation of ‘Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy’ (2015)

2.         International Christian University

Website: https://www.icu.ac.jp/en/

International Christian University is one of the top liberal arts universities in the Indo-Pacific. Its international faculty and those that focus on the Indo-Pacific have conducted research on security partnerships in the region and about evolving institutions in the region including the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. ICU have hosted symposium and seminars related to issues in the Indo-Pacific.  International Christian University following symposium and seminars: - 2018 “Re-configuring Asian regionalism: Embedding the Quadrilateral into the Indo-Pacific framework as a response to the BRI,” for The Emerging Indo-Pacific Region & the Geo- Economic Statecraft of the Region Workshop at the Japan Institute for International Affairs, Tokyo, Japan. December 10th, 2018 - 2018 “The Quad in the Indo-Pacific,” Seminar, International Christian University. December 12th, 2018 - 2019 “Middle Powers roles and interests in the Indo-Pacific: Identifying opportunity and mitigating challenges in a region in flux,” Canadian Embassy, Tokyo. Hosted by Canadian Embassy and Japan Institute for International Affairs. April 12th, 2019 - 2019 “Dimensions of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” for “A ‘Free and Open Indo- Pacific’: Approaches to Investment and Infrastructure,” hosted by the Pacific Forum April 15-16, 2019 at the US Embassy in Tokyo.

Prof. Stephen Nagy

Stephen is a Senior Associate Professor in March 2017 and works at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the International Christian University since September 2014. Concurrently, he  is a Research fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI) and a Visiting Fellow with the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA). Previously he was selected as a Distinguished Fellow for the Asia Pacific Foundation from 2017-2020.

Stephen provides macro-level geopolitical analysis on trends in the region to businesses, governments and the media. He has published widely in peer-reviewed international journals on topics related to trade, nationalism and China-Japan relations. He has also published in think tank and commercial outlets. 

His recent funded research projects are “Sino-Japanese Relations in the Wake of the 2012 Territorial Disputes: Investigating changes in Japanese Business’ trade and investment strategy in China”, and  “Perceptions and drivers of Chinese view on Japanese and US Foreign Policy in the Region”. He is currently working on middle power approaches to great power competition in the Indo-Pacific.

In addition to writing in media and policy forms outlets in Japanese and English such as Diamond OnLine, SCMP, the East Asian Forum and Policy-net on issues facing the region, Dr. Stephen R. Nagy is a frequent political/ economic and security commentator on Japan-China-Korea-US relations in Japanese and international media outlet such as the New York Times, BBC, CNN,  SCMP, The Japan Times, The National Post, cNBC, Al Jazeera, Channel News Asia, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, etc.

  • More information:

https://jp.linkedin.com/pub/stephen-nagy/5/731/10b

https://researchers.icu.ac.jp/icuhp/KgApp?kyoinId=ymdygdgbggy&Language=2

3.         South Asia Democratic Forum

Website: https://www.sadf.eu/

The South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF) is a Brussels-based think tank devoted to South Asia and its relationship with the European Union (EU) in the context of a global, changing world. SADF was an initiative based on the vision of both our Community forefathers and our contemporaneous, such as Jacques Delors: a world with democratic (national and supranational) institutions where all nations, peoples, traditions, and beliefs are respected without backward hierarchies or any kind of prejudice.

Our starting points are the European Community construction – not ignoring the other existing European and transatlantic dimensions – and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as well as other cooperation spheres that sometimes go beyond the Indian subcontinent. Our aim is to connect these different networks and to provide an alternative source of analysis on South Asian affairs for European policy makers. To this end, SADF organises high-level contacts, stimulates studies and evaluations, designs and disseminates research methods and concepts, combines networks and supports; it brings together people, private and public institutions, that can contribute to Europe-South Asia related cooperation and understanding.

Siegfried Wolf

Dr Siegfried O. Wolf is Director of Research at the South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), a Brussels based think tank, and Senior Researcher (member) at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University (Germany). He completed his degrees in Master of Arts (2003) in South Asian political science and Doctor of Philosophy (2009) from Heidelberg University. Additionally he is a visiting professor at the Naresuan University in Thailand, a visiting scholar at the De La Salle University in Manila (Philippines), an affiliated researcher at the Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU, Durham University, UK), and a former research fellow at Institute of Political Science (IPW, Heidelberg University) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH, New Delhi, India) as well as a former visiting fellow at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST, Islamabad, Pakistan). Dr Wolf works as a consultant to NATO-sponsored periodic strategic independent research and assessment of Afghanistan-Pakistan issues. He was member of the external expert group of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force, German Federal Foreign Office, and worked as a consultant for the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Germany. His latest book is on ‘The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: Concept, Context, Assessment’ (Springer, 2019).