Miwa Hirono, BA (Keio), MA (Keio), PhD (ANU)
Visiting Fellow, Department of International Relations

Email: miwa.hirono@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Dr Miwa Hirono's research is motivated by an enduring interest in the encounter between China and the West. She is the author of Civilizing Mission: International Christian Agencies in China (Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming 2009), which critically assesses the idea of a Christian ‘civilizing mission’, by making an historically-informed analysis of the role of international Christian agencies in China. She takes an anthropological approach to broader IR debates, and examines how international Christian NGOs put their values and beliefs into practice in the process of interaction with ethnic minorities, and how ethnic minorities resist or adapt those external values and beliefs. Her current research focuses on military-NGO cooperation in the context of China’s and Japan’s peacekeeping and humanitarian operations in Southeast Asia and Africa.

Research Interests

China’s international relations; global civil society and the role of NGOs; the role of religion in development; Northeast Asian history; China’s ethnic minority relations; Sino-Japan relations.

Key Publications

• Hirono, Miwa, forthcoming 2009. Civilizing Missions: International Religious Agencies in China. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Hirono, Miwa. Forthcoming 2008. ‘“Community” at the Frontier: Ethnic Minorities, International Actors, and the State in China’s Border Regions’ in Martin Gainsborough (ed.) On the Borders of State Power: Frontiers in the Greater Mekong Sub-region.Routledge.

Career Highlights

Visiting Lecturer at the School of Political Science and Communication, University of Canterbury (2006); Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2003-2004); Visiting Fellow at Beijing University (2003-2004).