Program Director - East Asia
On 1 April 2011 Linda Jakobson took up the position of East Asia Program Director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. Before that she lived and worked in China for close to 20 years and published six books on Chinese and East Asian society. A Mandarin speaker, she has published extensively on China’s foreign policy, the Taiwan Straits, China’s energy security, and climate change and science & technology polices.
Prior to joining Lowy she served as Director of the China and Global Security Programme and Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). From 1998 to 2009 she worked as Director of the China Program and Senior Researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA).
During her career, Jakobson has been awarded numerous awards and fellowships; among others she was a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1990. The Finnish edition of A Million Truths: A Decade in China (New York: M. Evans 1998) won the 1998 Finnish Government Publication Award.
Her most recent publications are New Foreign Policy Actors in China (SIPRI Policy Paper 2010/26 with Dean Knox) and China prepares for an ice-free Arctic (SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security 2010/2) as well as “The Myth of a Sino-Russian Challenge to the West” (International Spectator, with Hiski Haukkala, vol 44, no 3, September 2009).
Jakobson’s research focuses on China’s foreign and security policy as well as regional security issues in Northeast Asia.
