Profile

Senior Lecturer, The University of Sydney
Senior Fellow, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Thomas Wilkins
Indo-Pacific security; Australian foreign policy; Japanese foreign policy; Australia-Japan relations
Dr Thomas Wilkins is an Associate Professor in International Security at the University of Sydney. He also holds senior fellowships at the Japan Forum for International Relations (JFIR), The Pacific Forum and Indo-Pacific Studies Centre (IPSC), and previously, at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA). His academic and policy research focuses on Indo-Pacific security affairs, alliances and Japan-Australia relations. He is author of the monographs Security in Asia-Pacific: The Dynamics of Alignment (2019) and Strategic Minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific (2025) and numerous peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Contemporary Security Policy, Review of International Studies and The Pacific Review. He has also authored over 80 Policy Reports or commentaries for think tanks, including with his current affiliations and previous employers above. He presently serves as Associate Editor for the academic journals International Relations of the Asia-Pacific and the Australian Journal of International Affairs. He has been a Visiting Scholar or Researcher at the University of Tokyo, Keio University, the Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and the University of Hong Kong. He gained his BA, MA and PhD from the University of Birmingham, and MPhil from the University of Sydney.
List of publications
- 2026.07.21 Australia’s National Defence Strategy and the Strengthening of Bilateral Ties with Japan
- 2025.05.08 “On the Horizon”: Australia as a Maritime Power in the Indo-Pacific
- 2025.04.04 【Cooperation between European and Indo-Pacific Powers in the US alliance system project:Policy Paper Vol. 11】NATO-IP4: Accelerating Defense-Technological Cooperation Through a Networked Institutional Ecosystem
- 2025.01.21 US-Japan-Australia Trilateralism Takes off!
- 2023.09.14 Australia and AUKUS into the 2030s
- 2023.06.19 Australia’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review: mobilizing all elements of national power to meet the challenges of the Indo-Pacific era
- 2022.08.02 Averting a Sino-American Conflict: A Review of Kevin Rudd’s The Avoidable War
- 2022.06.17 Plus ça change: The new Australian Labor government’s foreign policy agenda
- 2022.02.21 Enhancing the “Special Strategic Partnership”: Australia and Japan Sign Reciprocal Access Agreement
- 2021.11.15 The AUKUS Trilateral Security Partnership and what It Means for Australia
- 2021.09.22 Japan as a contributor to the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific
- 2019.08.21 Re-assessing Australia’s Intra-alliance Bargaining Power in the Age of Trump
