Saori N. Katada is the Louis G. Lancaster Chair of International Relations at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, Department of Political Science. Previous to her current appointment
at UCSB, she was Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Center for
International Studies at the University of Southern California. Her 2026 book with Kei Koga,
Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World, was published by Oxford
University Press. Her single-authored books include: Japan's New Regional Reality:
Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific (Columbia University Press, 2020), and Banking on
Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management
(University of Michigan Press, 2001), which received the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book
Award. She served as the vice president of the International Studies Association and on the
editorial team of the Review of International Political Economy. She earned her Ph.D. from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).