James Fallows is Chair in US Media at the United States Studies Centre and National Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly magazine. He is a winner of the American Book Award for National Defense, and the National Magazine Award for his article “The Fifty First State?”. Professor Fallows latest book is Postcards from Tomorrow Square, a series of essays on contemporary China based on his experiences living in Beijing and Shanghai in recent years. A graduate of Harvard University, he served as editor of US News and World Report and was chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter.

Stephen Walt is the Robert and Rene Belfer Professor of International Relations. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he served as master of the Social Science Collegiate Division and deputy dean of Social Sciences. Professpr Walt has been a resident associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and presently serves on the editorial boards of Foreign Policy, Security Studies, International Relations, and the Journal of Cold War Studies, and he also serves as co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Professor Walt is the author of The Origins of Alliances, which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award, Revolution and War, Taming American Power: The Global Response To US Primacy, and, with co-author John Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby.

Robert Shapiro is co-founder and Chairman of Sonecon. He is also Director of the Globalization Centre at NDN, a Senior Fellow of the Georgetown University Business School, Chair of the Climate Task Force, co-Chair of America Task Force Argentina, and a board member of the Ax:son-Johnson Foundation in Sweden. From 1997 to 2001, Dr Shapiro was US under secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. He also was principal economic advisor in Governor Bill Clinton’s 1991-1992 presidential campaign and senior economic advisor to vice-president Albert Gore and Senator John Kerry in their presidential campaigns. In 2008, he advised the campaign and transition of Barack Obama. He has been a fellow of Harvard University, the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the author of Futurecast: How Superpowers, Populations And Globalization Will Change The Way You Live And Work.

Coral Bell is a Visiting Fellow in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University and a former professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. She began her career in international politics as a member of the Australian diplomatic service, and then took to academia and research at the London School of Economics, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Columbia University, the University of Sydney and the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. She was awarded an Order of Australia in 2005. Dr.Bell’s publications include Dependent Ally, The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy In The 1980s, and Living With Giants: Finding Australia’s Place In A More Complex World.

Michael Wesley is the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy. Previously he was professor of International Relations and director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University, and a visiting fellow at the University of Hong Kong and Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China. Prior to this, he was the assistant director-general for transnational issues at the Office of National Assessments, and a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of New South Wales. Between 2007 and 2009, Dr Wesley was the editor of the Australian Journal of International Affairs and a chief investigator in the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. He has served on the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts and the Queensland Art Gallery’s Board of Trustees. His most recent books are Energy Security In Asia, The Howard Paradox: Australian Diplomacy In Asia 1996-2006 and (with Allan Gyngell) Making Australian Foreign Policy.

G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Professor Ikenberry is the author of After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, And The Rebuilding Of Order After Major Wars, which won the 2002 Schroeder-Jervis Award for the best book in international history and politics, and Liberal Order And Imperial Ambition: American Power And International Order. He is currently writing a book entitled, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, And Transformation Of The American System.

Bill Emmott was the editor of The Economist (1993-2006). He has published 10 books. His latest, Rivals: How The Power Struggle Between China, India And Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade, was published in 2008. It was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber prize for books on international affairs and for the Duke of Westminster Medal for books on military history. Recently, he was appointed Chairman of the trustees of the London Library.

Geoffrey Garrett is founding CEO of the United States Studies Centre and Professor of Political Science at the University of Sydney. He was previously president of the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles and before that dean of the UCLA International Institute. He is author of Partisan Politics In The Global Economy and editor of The Global Diffusion Of Markets And Democracy, both published by Cambridge University Press. He has held academic appointments at Oxford, Stanford and Yale universities and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council on International Policy.

Pat Oliphant is an Australian-born cartoonist based in Sante Fe, New Mexico. Described by the New York Times as “the most influential cartoonist now working”, the Pulitzer-prize winner is the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world.