Profile
Aleksandra Babovic is an Assistant Professor in the HUS Program within its Political and Global Studies focus. She graduated with a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Kobe University Graduate School of Law in 2018. In the same faculty, Dr. Babovic earned her M.A. in 2015. During her education in Japan, she studied Diplomatic History and International Relations on a Japanese Ministry of Education scholarship during which time she started teaching at various Japanese universities. She earned her B.A in Political Science and M.A. in International Public Management from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris) in 2010.
Research Interests
Dr. Babovic has spent almost a decade focusing on Japan as the main case study for her research. Broadly speaking, she studies the changes in Japan’s foreign policy trajectory in relation to security, both its traditional and human security aspects. She uses multi-level analysis of institutional, practical, and cultural dimensions to explain complex decision-making processes concerning Japanese defense, migration, and energy policies.
Dr. Babovic’s first book, The Tokyo Trial, Justice, and the Postwar International Order published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2019 seeks to explain why the U.S. used the politico-legal tool to deal with the postwar reintegration of Japan; and how the war crimes program’s strategic value evolved in the early Cold War context to serve the Japanese government in resisting the U.S. pressures to change its national security policies and rearm. The book shows the long-lasting link between the Allied Powers’ war crimes program and national security in postwar Japan when it comes to its institutional, practical, and cultural dimensions. The research is based on the extensive qualitative analysis of documents collected from various national archives of the U.S., U.K., and Japan for the period between 1945 and 1956.
Teaching
- International Organizations and Global Governance
- East Asian International Relations
- International Law
- Peace and Conflict Studies
- Japanese Diplomacy
- Japanese Law
- Research Presentation Skills
- Negotiation Workshop