Céline PAJON
Research Fellow, Head of Japan Research, Coordinator of the Program on Pacific Islands,
Center for Asian Studies, Ifri
Research Interests:
- Japanese foreign and defense policy
- International relations and geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific
- French and European approaches to the Indo-Pacific and Pacific Islands
Celine Pajon is Head of Japan Research at the Center for Asian Studies of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), Paris, where she has been a Research Fellow since 2008. She also coordinates the research program on Pacific Islands, set up in March 2022. Céline is a Senior Researcher with the Japan Chair at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) and an International Research Fellow with the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) in Tokyo. Her area of expertise is Japan’s foreign and defense policy, as well as geostrategic dynamics of the Indo-Pacific area, including the position of France and Europe in the region, and their policies vis à vis the Pacific Islands. A graduate from the Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and Sciences Po Lyon, Céline also studied in Waseda University (Tokyo) and Osaka University.
She tweets @CelinePajon
Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden are meeting for the first state visit under the Biden administration, which is reserved for France.
Back in September 2021, the announcement of AUKUS – the defense partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) was a shock to Paris.
The Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) were the first to ratify the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Indeed, for them, climate change has had very concrete implications for years. Islanders have seen the sea level rising, endangering the very existence of atolls. They have also experienced...
Addressing remotely the 8th Japan-Africa TICAD Summit held in Tunis between August 27th and 28th, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged $30 billion in public and private contributions to the African continent over the course of the next three years. This is a quite a remarkable...
The “new scramble for the Pacific” is characterized by a race for the control of maritime space and resources, oscillating between ocean grabbing and ocean commoning.
Laying the foundation for the Eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi held talks on 28 March 2022 with ministers from 50 African nations. Hayashi expressed concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine had...
The war in Ukraine has shaken the foundations of European security and of the global rules-based order. In many ways, Russia’s aggression has been a wake-up call for the EU, adding a sense of urgency to its ongoing transformation to becoming a stronger geopolitical actor, materialised by the...
In recent years, France and the European Union (EU) have published their respective Indo-Pacific strategies and a Ministerial Forum was held in Paris on February 22, 2022, bringing together over 60 foreign affairs ministers from European and Pacific Island countries.
The war in Ukraine has led to a major rift between Japan and Russia.
The announcement of the new AUKUS alliance between Australia, the UK and the U.S. came as a shock for France.
When Prime Minister Fumio Kishida becomes the first Japanese leader to attend a NATO leaders summit on Wednesday, he’ll be looking to stress the need for unity in preventing China from taking the “wrong lessons” from the Ukraine war as the bloc looks to expand its footprint in the Indo-Pacific...
Marine protected areas (MPAs) offer a solution for countries in the region to manage their maritime space. Access to scientific data is required to set MDA.
The United States is the linchpin of Taiwan’s security. Under Donald Trump’s presidency, as tensions with the People’s Republic of China grew, the US increasingly took steps to signal...
Alarmed by China’s rising power, its frictions with neighboring countries in the East and South China seas, allegations of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region and crackdowns in Hong Kong, European countries are seeking to step up their involvement in the Indo-Pacific region.
Officially, Japan has “national security” concerns about technology exports to South Korea. Unofficially, World War II still casts an ugly shadow.
Tokyo is ramping up international partnerships and investments to offer an alternative to Beijing’s signature foreign-policy project. For the first time in 15 years, Japan’s foreign minister last month paid a visit to the tiny island nation of Sri Lanka, shepherding a dozens-strong delegation...
On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dissolved Japan’s parliament, the starting pistol for the snap elections he called a year early to get over a “national crisis.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the first foreign leader to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump after his election. On Friday, Feb. 10, he will meet with President Trump, before spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Corea del Norte ha tratado esta semana de aumentar la presión para ser reconocida como una potencia nuclear con la prueba del pasado miércoles en la que aseguraba que empleó una bomba de hidrógeno. Y ha introducido un nuevo elemento en el gran juego de alianzas estratégicas y comerciales que...
Los actos que esta semana organiza China para conmemorar el 70 aniversario de su victoria ante Japón, coronados por un desfile militar en la plaza de Tiananmen, plantean un nuevo desafío a los lazos entre Pekín y Tokio, ya dañados en los últimos años por desavenencias históricas y...