Professor James Cotton
Visiting Professor
Phone: +61 2 6268 6251
Fax: +61 2 6268 8879
Email: j.cotton@adfa.edu.au
Professional Background
BA (Flinders), MA (Durham), MScEcon PhD (London School of Economics), FRAS
James Cotton graduated with first class honours and was a University medal winner at Flinders University. He was a 1975-76 Procter Fellow at Princeton University, and studied at the Beijing Language Institute (1980). He has held academic positions in Western Australia, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Singapore, the Australian National University, and Tasmania (head of Politics School, 1993-1997); he is a former head of the School of Politics, UNSW@ADFA. In 2001 he was Centennial Professor in International Relations and in the Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics, and in 2004 and 2007 he was Visiting Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong. He was a member of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington DC, as Australian Scholar, Session 2, 2009.
Courses Taught
Undergraduate: Regional Security Issues
Postgraduate: Asia-Pacific Security; East Timor: Intervention and Independence; The Emergence of Australian International Relations.
Research Interests / Projects
- Proliferation in North Korea and its regional consequences
- Australian foreign and security policy
- Early Australian international relations
- Asian regional organizations and security
He is currently working on several projects including on current regional relations; on the history of the international relations discipline in Australia; and on Australia and the United Nations.
Professional Activities
Between 1997 and 2003 James Cotton was a foundation member of the Foreign Minister?s Advisory Council convened by the Foreign Minister of Australia. He is a member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, and also of the Australian Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP); he is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (London). Having previously served as Editor, he is on the Editorial Board of The Australian Journal of International Affairs.
Publications
He is the author of over 200 publications on international relations, Asian politics and political thought including articles in Asian Survey, The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Asian Security, Government and Opposition, Political Studies, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, Survival, The Journal of the History of Ideas, The Australian Journal of Political Science, Security Dialogue, The Australian Journal of International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, The International History Review and Comparative Political Studies. Over 30 of these articles are in journals ranked as ?A? or ?A*? in the ERA 2010 assessment of academic publications. His first book was Asian Frontier Nationalism (Manchester University Press, 1989); his most recent books are: East Timor, Australia and regional order: intervention and its aftermath in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2004) and (edited with John Ravenhill), Trading on Alliance Security: Australia in World Affairs 2001-2005 (Oxford University Press/AIIA, 2007).
Postgraduate Supervision
Since 2002, as principal supervisor, James Cotton has graduated the following PhD students:
- Gregory John de Somer, The Redefinition of Asia (UNSW, 2003)
- Michael Boyle, Policy-Making and Pragmatism: Australia?s Management of Security Co-operation with Indonesia during the New Order Period (UNSW, 2004)
- Chan Heng Kong, PAP Singapore: A Case Study of Stationary bandit in a Market Economy (UNSW, 2005)
- Christopher Roberts, ASEAN, towards a security community? (UNSW, 2007)
He is currently supervising PhD theses on East Timor, on North Korea, on Proliferation/Counter-proliferation, on Australia-Pakistan relations and on Australian diplomatic history.