Tommy Chai is a PhD Candidate at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, the Australian National University. He aspires to be a regional expert and is interested in understanding how history informs international relations in Southeast Asia and broader East Asia. Beyond his identity as a political scientist, Tommy enjoys cooking and comes from a family of chicken rice restaurant owners in Malaysia and Singapore, with origins from Hainan.

Paul is a Strategic Defence Policy practitioner and has worked for the Government of Canada in a variety of Defence, Security, and Intelligence positions. His most recent posting was as the first Policy Advisor to the Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) where he was responsible for providing advice on domestic and international issues and coordinating the strategic direction of RCN global activities. This leads directly to his PhD project (co-supervised by Prof. Jochen Prantl) which seeks to both contribute to the scholarly literature on the role of statecraft and order in East Asia while also providing a guide for policy-makers on the strategic use of navies as a diplomatic tool.