BIO

Currently

  • Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC): member and writer, since 2017
  • Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies: Associate Member, since 2029
  • Book: underway on Indo-Pacific strategic discourses

2021 speaking engagements

2015-2020

  • NATO Defense College: twice-yearly presentations since 2011 to January 2020 on China, India, Japan, the Koreas and the “Indo-Pacific”.
  • NATO Defense College Foundation: Analyst, Sept. 2018 – July 2020 for the “Indo-Pacific”
  • “UK in the Indo-Pacific” section of the Henry Jackson Society Report launch at the Houses of Parliament in April 2019.
  • annual Presentations on China, Indo-Pacific at Baltic Defence College in 2017, 2018.
  • invited discussant on Indian Ocean security at the Foreign Office in July 2017
  • invite-only round tables at International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2017, 2018.

1992-2015
As a successful lecturer in international relations at Brunel University, from where I retired in 2015, there was particular focus on teaching, research and prolific publications (see www.d-scott.com/publications ) on Asia-Pacific international relations as well as the rise of China and the rise of India in a Western-dominated international system undergoing change. Such teaching, research and publications incorporated the way in which perceptions and images (IR constructivism) play a key role in inter-state relations, alongside traditional geopolitics, critical geopolitics and structural power processes. The emergence of the “Indo-Pacific” was pinpointed back in 2012, and has accelerated since then in ongoing publications.

Such interests also led to presentations at the Ministry of Defence in the UK, the European Parliament in Brussels, US agencies in Washington, and since 2011 to now, ongoingly at the NATO Defense College in Rome

East-West themes had initially been pursued by me at Brunel University in its Religious Studies programme with particular regard to Buddhism and to Inter-faith issues; and in its History programme with particular regard to India, China, and East-West encounters. This progression from religious studies through history to international relations reflected Akira Iriye’s sense of “international relations as intercultural relations“. It came out of my earlier overlaying of a B.A in International Relations (School of African & Asian Studies) gained at Sussex, with an M.A in Religious Studies gained at Lancaster, and a Ph.D on East-West encounters in Afghanistan gained at Lancaster.

Consequently from 1984-2000 a swathe of Buddhism-related and inter-faith encounters articles appeared, while from 2001-present various articles on the theme of “Orientalism” (i.e. Western perceptions of “the East”) have continued to appear.