Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies

Princeton Class of 2026 member and 2025-26 PIIRS Undergraduate Fellow Michelle Miao has been awarded a Gaither Junior Fellowship, which supports graduating seniors and recent graduates to work as research assistants to scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. Miao is among 18 fellows selected for this opportunity and will work next year at Carnegie’s Asia program. Read more at princeton.edu.

Four scholars from disciplines spanning government, history and applied economics have been named to the 2026-27 cohort of PIIRS Postdoctoral Fellows Program.

The program supports scholars whose research deepens understanding of specific regions while tackling big-picture questions in the social sciences. Fellows will join a vibrant intellectual community of faculty and peers, engaging in regular workshops, interdisciplinary conversations, and collaborative activities that challenge assumptions and expand horizons.

The PIIRS Postdoctoral Fellows for the 2026-2027 academic year are:
- Sudarshana Chanda, Harvard University
- Natalia Pia Guerrero Trinidad, University of Minnesota
- Andrew O’Donohue O’Donohue, Harvard University
- Sonya Schoenberger, Stanford University

More about the fellows at the link in bio.

Revisit PIIRS event, an exceptionally dynamic and compelling discussion about where America is headed and what it means for the rest of the world with Princeton faculty and alumni Zaid Al-Ali, Michael O’Hanlon *82 ‘91, Adela Raz and Rory Truex ‘07.

Alumni were excited to connect with friends, learn something new and celebrate being together.

📷:

Congratulations to Princeton’s Class of 2026! PIIRS celebrated seniors who earned minors and certificates in African Studies; Contemporary European Politics and Society; Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies; South Asian Studies; and Translation and Intercultural Communication.

Program directors and PIIRS staff also awarded senior thesis prizes to: Uma Fox (South Asian studies), Navani Rachumallu (South Asian studies), Brian Mhando (African studies), Mia Sampson (African studies) and Anne Xu (Translation).

📸: Adena Stevens

PIIRS event is this Friday! Join us at 3:30 p.m. in Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71 for “America, Quo Vadis? The Future of U.S. Engagement in an Uncertain World.” At no point since the end of the Cold War has the question of America’s role in the world felt more open or more urgent. As the United States reconsiders its commitments to allies, institutions and the international order it helped build, the consequences are far-reaching and uncertain. Join Princeton faculty and alumni for a wide-ranging, candid conversation about where America is headed and what it means for the rest of the world.

In the meantime, learn more about our panelists. Zaid Al-Ali is an independent scholar and a lawyer. He specializes in constitutional negotiations, peace negotiations and commercial arbitration. His primary field of academic interest is comparative constitutional law and constitutional negotiations in Arab-majority countries. He is widely considered to be among the leading experts on Iraq, on Arab constitutions, and on conflict dynamics in the Arab region. He has published widely on comparative constitutional law and on Iraq.

PIIRS event is this Friday! Join us at 3:30 p.m. in Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71 for “America, Quo Vadis? The Future of U.S. Engagement in an Uncertain World.” At no point since the end of the Cold War has the question of America’s role in the world felt more open or more urgent. As the United States reconsiders its commitments to allies, institutions and the international order it helped build, the consequences are far-reaching and uncertain. Join Princeton faculty and alumni for a wide-ranging, candid conversation about where America is headed and what it means for the rest of the world.

In the meantime, learn more about our panelists. Rory Truex ‘07 is an associate professor in Princeton’s Department of Politics and Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. His research focuses on Chinese politics and theories of authoritarian rule. His book “Making Autocracy Work: Representation and Responsiveness in Modern China” investigates the nature of representation in authoritarian systems, specifically the politics surrounding China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), and argues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engineering a system of “representation within bounds” in the NPC, fostering information revelation but silencing political activism. He is currently working on a new set of projects on repression, human rights, and dissent in contemporary China.

Ready for ? Join PIIRS on Friday, May 22 at 3:30 p.m. for “America, Quo Vadis? The Future of U.S. Engagement in an Uncertain World.” At no point since the end of the Cold War has the question of America’s role in the world felt more open or more urgent. As the United States reconsiders its commitments to allies, institutions and the international order it helped build, the consequences are far-reaching and uncertain. Join Princeton faculty and alumni for a wide-ranging, candid conversation about where America is headed and what it means for the rest of the world.

In the meantime, learn more about our panelists. Michael O’Hanlon *82 ‘91 is the inaugural holder of the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy and director of research in the Foreign Policy program at The Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy and budgets, the use of military force, and American national security policy. He is a senior fellow and directs the Strobe Talbott Center on Security, Strategy, and Technology. He co-directs the Africa Security Initiative as well. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and Columbia University.

is just days away! Join PIIRS on Friday, May 22 at 3:30 p.m. for “America, Quo Vadis? The Future of U.S. Engagement in an Uncertain World.” At no point since the end of the Cold War has the question of America’s role in the world felt more open or more urgent. As the United States reconsiders its commitments to allies, institutions and the international order it helped build, the consequences are far-reaching and uncertain. Join Princeton faculty and alumni for a wide-ranging, candid conversation about where America is headed and what it means for the rest of the world.

In the meantime, learn more about our panelists. Adela Raz served as the last Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United States. She is the director of the Afghanistan Policy Lab, an Afghanistan-focused policy institute. The lab is a joint venture between Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination.

On Friday, April 24, the Global Japan Lab (GJL) hosted the interdisciplinary symposium, “Declining Birth Rates and Population Change: Lessons from Japan and Beyond,” which brought together scholars from multiple fields to place Japan’s demographic challenges in conversation with broader global trends.

Experts agreed that, while the trend toward very low fertility is widespread, countries are experiencing demographic change in distinct ways shaped by their social, political and economic contexts. There is much that other countries can learn from the Japanese experience, just as there is much that Japan can learn from demographic developments and policy responses elsewhere. By placing these cases in a comparative perspective, the symposium aimed to foster a nuanced and globally informed conversation about population change.

Read more at gjl.princeton.edu.

Save the date for PIIRS’s !

At no point since the end of the Cold War has the question of America’s role in the world felt more open or more urgent. As the United States reconsiders its commitments to allies, institutions and the international order it helped build, the consequences are far-reaching and uncertain.

Join Princeton faculty and alumni — Zaid Al-Ali, Michael O’Hanlon *82 ‘91, Adela Raz, and Rory Truex ‘07 — for a wide-ranging, candid conversation about where America is headed and what it means for the rest of the world. The panel will be moderated by Trisha Craig, PIIRS’s executive director.