Garren Mulloy is a Professor in the Faculty of International Relations and Graduate School of Asian Area Studies, Daito Bunka University, Saitama, Japan, and also teaches intensive courses on peace operations for the University of Tsukuba Business School, having previously taught at Keio University. His research has focused primarily upon Japanese security, having completed a PhD on Japan Self-Defense Forces’ (JSDF) overseas operations at Newcastle University (2011), and he has written on contemporary defence, security, diplomacy and related issues, as well as historical studies of Japan, the UK, and war memorialisation. He is currently a visiting scholar in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge (April 2022-March 2023), focusing primarily upon how the UK and other states and institutions engage with the Japanese Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) Vision, as well as continuing research into Japan's post-war period, memories of war, and development of defence institutions and policies. He is also researching a range of other issues, including a project with Catherine Jones (St. Andrews) and Vanessa Newby (Leiden) on Ocean Governance.

His EASG research seminar is based on his latest book: Defenders of Japan: The Post-Imperial Armed Forces, 1946-2016-A History (London: Hurst & Co., 2021). In it, he charts the development of Japan's post-imperial forces that preceded the JSDF, and the JSDF themselves as existentially challenged and unorthodox military institutions serving a civil society that decries militarism. The talk investigates how the forces developed during the Cold War, adapted to post-Cold War events, their contributions to Japanese and global security and possible reconfiguration for Japan's future security needs. The book and talk examine the internal structures and cultures of the Forces and deconstructs how the JSDF have adapted and will continue to adapt within domestic norms, caught between unresolved legacies of Japan's imperial past and a dynamically shifting balance of regional and global power.