Akiko Yamanaka
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Special Advisor to the President, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
President, International Tsunami Disaster Prevention Society
Senior Diplomatic Fellow, Cambridge Central Asia Forum, Cambridge University
Senior Visiting Fellow, Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA)
Former Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs
Former Member of the House of Representatives of Japan
2014 Special Ambassador for Peacebuilding of Japan
2016 Special Ambassador for the World Tsunami Awareness Day of Japan
Awards
OISCA Award (for Contributions to Asia)
International Soroptimist Japan’s Sen Kayoko Prize (for Contributions to International Understanding)
Biography
She has been active in both academia and the political arena.
She pursued her academic career as Visiting Professor at the Churchill College of the University of Cambridge, the United Nations University, Graduate School of Hokkaido University, and Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford in UK, Harvard University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Brookings Institute in USA.
In the political arena, she has served as a member of the House of Representatives of Japan as well as Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Director of the Committee of Foreign Affairs. She also served as Acting Director of the Defense Committee and Director General of the Women’s Bureau of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. She launched “The Human Resources Development Program in Asia for Peacebuilding” as Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs and also “The World Assembly for Women (WAW!)”.
Her expertise includes International Peacebuilding, International Negotiation and Strategic Studies, Natural and Human Induced Disaster Prevention, Preventive Diplomacy on which she has written and given lectures extensively.
She is currently working on Human Development for Peacebuilding, on Human Security including security of water, food and energy, as well as on Natural and Human Induced Disaster Prevention, Mitigation and Social Resilience.