Teaching

I teach in the Political Science and International Relations Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. Prior to joining Victoria, I taught at Hawaii Pacific University, Georgetown University, the Catholic University of America, and the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. My teaching experience spans the international relations discipline, including creating the first ever Introduction to Security Studies course at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), which for six consecutive years has been the second largest course (150-200 students) in our interdisciplinary school. I also retooled and twice taught a Foreign Policy Analysis course to bridge academic and practitioner approaches to foreign policy, and am the first faculty member at my school to incorporate “wargames” (simulations) and tabletop exercises as pedagogical techniques to aid student learning. 

My teaching philosophy stresses critical thinking and practical engagement. Although I do my share of traditional lectures, in order to better respond to the learning needs and preferences of Maori and Pacifika students, I began introducing small-group collaborative assignments, typically in unconventional mediums like writing op-eds and podcasts. I also encourage students to grapple with who benefits and who is harmed by the choices governments make even when our theories elide such questions. I think it important to put theories and conceptual frameworks in the historical context from which they arose, as well as to use them as tools for making sense of contemporary problems. 

Courses Taught at Victoria University of Wellington:
STRA535: Designing Strategy: War Gaming and Analytic Tradecraft (evals)
STRA535: Grand Strategy in Theory & Practice (evals)
INTP245: Foreign Policy Analysis (evals)
INTP115: Introduction to Security Studies (evals 2017, evals 2020)

Courses Taught at Hawaii Pacific University:
PS6601: Diplomacy and International Relations

Courses Taught at Georgetown University:
ASST713: Comparative Defense Policies of the Asia-Pacific
INAF470: Korea-Japan Relations Since World War II

Courses Taught at the Catholic University of America:
POL601: Introduction to International Affairs
CPOL554: Grand Strategy & U.S. Foreign Policy
CPOL542: Security Politics of the Korean Peninsula
CPOL530: Problematizing North Korea: Identity, Security, and Politics