Stephen Noakes

Associate Professor and Major & Specialization Leader in Politics and International Relations, University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand

Stephen Noakes is Associate Professor and Major & Specialization Leader in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

A specialist in Chinese politics and foreign policy, his research examines the global dimensions of domestic institutional change, with a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

His articles have appeared in China Quarterly, The Pacific Review, Voluntas, Political Science Quarterly, Pacific Affairs, and elsewhere.

Among his books are Democratization: A Thematic Approach (Bloomsbury, 2023), Asia-Pacific Small States: Political Economies of Resilience (with Alexander C. Tan, Eds.), (Lynne Rienner, 2023), and The Advocacy Trap: Transnational Activism and State Power in China (Manchester UP, 2017).

He was Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Auckland from 2021–25 and a MOFA Taiwan Fellow in 2019.

He previously held Fellowships at Peking University, Fudan University, and the University of Toronto, and is a regular commentator on global China in international print and broadcast media.