Balazs Kiglics is a recent PhD graduate and a Teaching Fellow in the Languages and Cultures Programme at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His doctoral thesis explored contemporary Japanese political and academic views of Japan-China relations.

He also works as the Co-ordinator of the Otago Foreign Policy School and the Otago National Security School.

Balazs has co-edited the volume New Zealand and the World: Past, Present and Future (World Scientific, 2018) and co-edited the book From Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific: Diplomacy in a Contested Region (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), for which he also contributed a chapter. He is currently co-editing the book The Foreign Policy of Jacinda Ardern’s Government in the COVID-19 Era (World Scientific, forthcoming in 2023).

In his spare time, Balazs often contemplates the pressing issues around human coexistence, in particular thinking about how we can learn from our mistakes as a species better, stop hurting each other and destroying our environment, and start focusing on rebuilding our future together. One of his most far-fetched visions is that we still have enough humility, wisdom, and will to become a globally- and even cosmicly-responsible species one day. While Balazs is the first to admit how far he personally is from such an ideal, he continues to draw inspiration from a great wizard who once said “there’s more to these hobbits than meets the eye,” hence having chosen New Zealand as his home.