Position 
Associate Research Fellow
Nationality 
Japan
At UNU-CRIS 
01/09/2023
Research Interests 

United Nations, Regional integration in Southeast Asia, International Relations in Asia-Pacific, comparative regionalism, UN-regional organisational cooperation in peace and security, Sustainable Development, Human Rights, nuclear disarmament, Japanese foreign and development aid policies  

Education 

PhD in International Relations, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK)
MSc in International Relations, The London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)
MA in Governance, Keio University (Japan)
LLB, Keio University (Japan)

Biographical Statement 

Hana Umezawa is Associate Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS since September 2023. She was previously a Visiting Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS (April-June 2021), when she collaborated on a joint paper on the UN and the regions, that was submitted for a publication in a journal. She also prepared a paper on the subject for presentation at the Annual Conference of ACUNS (Academic Council on the United Nations System) that took place in New York in June 2021. She was a Visiting Researcher at UNU-CRIS (2011-2015) when she was involved in several book projects including Foresight is 20/20: Scenario Building for Policy Analysis and Strategy Development, ASEM Outlook Report 2012 (ASEF, 2012) and Drivers of Regionalism and Integration in Europe and Asia (Routledge, June 2015), among others.

She is currently based in Italy teaching courses on Southeast Asian Regionalism within the programme of Master in Advanced Global Studies (MAGS) at Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milano. She is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Bologne (Italy), Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland), and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (Japan). Prior to moving to Italy, she was a Professor at Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University (Ukraine) until March 2022. Prior to her move to Ukraine in 2019, she was Associate Professor at O.P. Jindal Global University in India (2018-2019); Assistant Professor at the University of Sharjah (UAE) (2016-2017); and Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) at the UNU headquarter in Tokyo, where she worked as a member of the research project on SDGs implementation within and around Asia-Pacific region, as well as in Japan (2015-2016). She had served as adviser and consultant for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (2008-2010) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) (2012-2014).

As Associate Research Fellow, she will be conducting research about including, but not limited to, the role of regions and regional organisations within the UN, the challenges for SDGs implementation, and the role of Japan in the UN.