Keiko Hirata
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Political Science
California State University, Northridge

Dr. Hirata is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University Northridge. Dr. Hirata's teaching and research interests focus on foreign policymaking and state-society relations in Japan and East Asia. She is the author of Civil Society in Japan: The Growing Role of NGOs in Tokyo's Aid and Development Policy (Palgrave, 2002); co-editor (with Yoichiro Sato) of Norms, Interests, and Power in Japanese Foreign Policy (Palgrave, in press), and recipient of the University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science/Oxford University Press Prize for best paper published in Social Science Japan Journal in 2004 (for Beached Whales: Examining Japan's Rejection of an International Norm.)

Previously, Dr. Hirata has taught or conducted research at the University of California, Irvine; the University of California, San Diego; the University of Hawai'i; Tsukuba University in Japan; Hanoi National University, Viet Nam; and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Egypt.

Dr. Hirata's current research investigates conflicts of state identity and security policy in Japan.