Louis G. Lancaster Chair of International Relations
Beginning July 1st, 2026
Saori N. Katada is the Louis G. Lancaster Chair of International Relations at the University of California, Santa Barbara (starting July 2026). Previously, she was at the University of Southern California, where she was the Director of the Center for International Studies and Professor of International Relations. She recently served as the vice president of the International Studies Association and on the editorial team of Review of International Political Economy. She is the co-author of an Oxford University Press book, Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World (forthcoming, February 2026). Her single-authored book Japan's New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific was published by Columbia University Press in 2020, and its Japanese version was published from Nikkei Press in 2022. She received the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Award for her other book Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (University of Michigan Press, 2001). Her research covers geoeconomics, international political economy of trade and finance, monetary policy and Japanese foreign policy. Her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her B.A. is from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).