Moderator: Maaike Okano-Heijmans

Maaike Okano-Heijmans is a Senior Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute. She is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Leiden, where she has been teaching on ‘Non-Western Diplomacy’ in the Master of Science in International Relations and Diplomacy (MIRD) since 2012.

Her main research interests are in connectivity, economic diplomacy and international relations in EU-Asia relations, with a special focus on China and Japan. Recent projects focus on digital connectivity, and the role of big tech companies and the effect of the fourth industrial revolution on geopolitics. A key question underlying much of her work is how developments in these fields matter to Europe, the EU and, in particular, to the Netherlands. In addition, since joining Clingendael in 2006 she has worked on consular affairs and diplomacy – also known as ‘citizen security’ or ‘duty of care’.

Maaike leads Clingendael’s projects on ‘Geopolitics, great powers and global governance’ for the Dutch Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, under the multi-annual PROGRESS framework. She is a regularly invited speaker at track 1.5 dialogues, think tanks and universities in Europe and Asia.

From 2016 until the end of the project in July 2020, she has been Clingendael’s scientific coordinator for the Asia-Pacific Research and Advice Network (#APRAN), advising the European External Action Service and the European Commission.

Maaike is a board member of the European Japan Advanced Research Network (EJARN) and a member of CSCAP-EU (Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific), the track-two organisation promoting security dialogue in Asia. She is on the editorial board of the The Hague Journal of Diplomacy (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers), the Clingendael Spectator (Clingendael’s Magazine, in Dutch) and of the International Journal of Diplomacy and Economy .

She has lived and studied in the United States (Fulbright Program student), Hong Kong (Nuffic & VSB scholarships), Japan (Monbusho Scholar) and Australia. Prior to joining Clingendael, she worked at the Japanese Embassy in the Hague. From 2008-2013 Maaike was a non-resident visiting fellow at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy of the Australian National University in Canberra. She was granted a Canon Foundation Research Fellowship in 2013.

In 2012 Maaike obtained her PhD in Political Science from the University of Antwerp, Belgium after the successful defense of her thesis on Economic Diplomacy and the Balance of National Interests, with a special focus on Japan. She holds two Master’s degrees: one in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam (2001) and another in International Relations from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan (2003). Furthermore, she studied the Japanese language at Leiden University, the Netherlands.