Our team
The La Trobe Asia Team
Our office is:
Room 302, Level 3
Humanities 2
E: asia@latrobe.edu.au
TW: @latrobeasia
Bec Strating
Director
Bec Strating is the Director of La Trobe Asia and Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University. Her research focuses primarily on maritime disputes in Asia and Australian foreign and defence policy.
Bec leads the DFAT-funded “Blue Security” network focused on maritime security issues in the Indo-Pacific. She is a non-visiting fellow at the Royal Australian Navy’s Seapower Centre, a member of the East West Centre Council on Indo-Pacific Relations, an expert affiliate at the Australian National University’s National Security College, and President of the Women in International Security-Australia’s steering committee. In 2024, she was awarded the Bernard Brodie Prize for best article published in Contemporary Security Policy in 2023. She was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2024.
Bec is the author of ‘Girt by Sea: reimagining Australia’s Security’ with Professor Joanne Wallis (La Trobe University Press/Black Inc, 2024) and co-editor of 'Blue Security: Maritime Strategies in the Indo-Pacific' (Routledge, 2024, forthcoming).
Bec is available for research supervision in Australian politics, Australian Foreign Policy and International Relations of Asia.
T: +61 3 9479 6671
E: B.Strating@latrobe.edu.au
TW: @becstrating
Ruth Gamble
Deputy Director (Research)
Ruth Gamble is an environmental, climate and cultural historian of Tibet, the Himalaya, and Asia.
She completed her Ph.D. in Asian Studies at the Australian National University, where she taught Tibetan language studies and Asian Religions. Before coming to La Trobe, she was a post-doctorate fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich) and a Himalayan Fellow at Yale University’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She came to La Trobe as a David Myers Research Fellow and is currently an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, researching the Himalayan Cryosphere.
Ruth is the lead author of Rivers of the Asian Highlands: from Deep Time to the Climate Crisis (Routledge 2024), Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism (OUP 2018) and Master of Mahamudra (Shambhala 2020), with a forthcoming book on the history of the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River. She has also published numerous articles and book chapters on the region’s ecological histories, politics, and beliefs.
E: r.gamble@latrobe.edu.au
TW: @waterthe_planet
Ambika Vishwanath
DFAT Maitri Research Fellow
Ambika Vishwanath is the Co-Founder and Director of the India based Kubernein Initiative and recipient of a 2024 Maitri Fellowship funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Ambika is a geopolitical analyst and water security specialist with an interest in enhanced global climate and security cooperation. At La Trobe Asia she will explore opportunities for enhanced climate and security cooperation between India and Australia, with a focus on the Pacific Islands.
She has led track two diplomacy efforts and consulted with several governments and international organizations in the MENA region, Africa, Europe and South Asia, and helped shape their policies in the field of conflict resolution, water diplomacy and security. She is a member of the Munich Security Conference Global Food Security Task Force and works with security and multilateral organisations to increase understanding on water and climate aspects of security.
Ambika has a Masters of Comparative Politics from The American University in Cairo and a Bachelor of Arts (Political Science) from Washington College.
E: a.vishwanath@latrobe.edu.au
TW: @theidlethinker
Lupita Wijaya
Research Fellow
Lupita holds a PhD in Communications and Media Studies from Monash University. She has been researching the South China Sea conflict since 2018, examining how media narratives shape territorial imaginaries and national interest frames. Her most recent publications include “Navigating the Roles of Primary Definers in the South China Sea Conflict” (International Communication Gazette, 2025), which combines content analysis, sentiment analysis, and named entity recognition to examine how political elites and domestic media in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia strategically amplify or omit voices in constructing national narratives of maritime conflict.
She currently coordinates the Southeast Asia Maritime Media Visits Project, supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The program fosters knowledge exchange between journalists and maritime policy experts across Southeast Asia and Australia. As part of this initiative, she is also developing a toolkit to support best practices in maritime reporting.
Matt Smith
Senior Communications Coordinator
Matt Smith is a communicator at La Trobe Asia and has worked in a variety of roles at the institution previously. He primarily writes and designs publications, manages social media and produces multimedia. He hosts and produces La Trobe Asia’s podcast Asia Rising, as well as La Trobe University’s popular podcast Emperors of Rome. He holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) from the University of Newcastle and a Masters of Global Communications from La Trobe University.
Outside of La Trobe University he's freelanced for The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Encore Magazine, The National Times, Crikey, The Punch and more. He's a regular contributor to ABC Radio National, and his favourite dinosaur is the Stegosaurus.
E: matthew.smith@latrobe.edu.au
TW: @nightlightuy
Hannah Bourke
Senior Program Coordinator
Hannah’s professional experience includes her former roles as Office Coordinator of the Australian Institute of International Affairs Victoria (AIIA VIC) as well as Marketing and Branding Manager at ST SOLUTIONS AUSTRALIA (SoftBank Corp).
In a voluntary capacity, Hannah is the Melbourne Program Coordinator of Girls Run the World (GRTW) and Council Member of the Melbourne Youth Advisory Council (MYAC) of the U.S. Consulate General in Melbourne. Committed to supporting young leaders in the international affairs space, Hannah led the inaugural GRTW Melbourne Program in 2025 which facilitated opportunities for young women to meaningfully engage with Consulates General and leading Asia-Australia think tanks.
Dedicated to supporting the growth of the Australia-Japan relationship, Hannah formerly contributed to the Australia Japan Business Council of Victoria (AJBCV) as the 2023-25 Marketing and Communications Director.
Chandni Singh
Chandni Singh is a Lead Researcher, School of Environment and Sustainability at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and recipient of a 2024 Maitri Fellowship funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
She is an environmental social scientist and her research explores the linkages between climate change and development, with a focus on differential vulnerability and climate change adaptation. She has worked across South Asia and Africa, and currently leads projects on livelihoods transitions and rural-urban migration in the context of a changing climate.
Chandni was a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the Sixth Assessment Report and on the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2024. She serves on the Editorial Boards of Regional Environmental Change, WIREs Climate Change, and Urbanisation.
Chandni’s fellowship will focus on developing networks and co-operation in climate change adaptation research between Australia and India.
Sonika Gupta
La Trobe Asia Visiting Fellow (2024)
Dr Sonika Gupta is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. Sonika has an M.A, M.Phil, and Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) New Delhi in Global Politics and Chinese Studies. In 2011, she founded IITM China Studies Centre and acted as its Co-ordinator from April 2011-July 2015.
Her research interests include India's Himalayan borderlands, Tibetan exile community in India, Chinese foreign policy and International Relations theory. Her current projects include examining protracted conflict in borderland communities, Tibetan rehabilitation in Indian Himalayas and Democratization of Tibetan exile politics.
Uttam Lal
La Trobe Asia Visiting Fellow (2024)
Dr Uttam Lal is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Geography at Sikkhim University and his academic interests academic cover Himalayan Ecology, highland social-economic dynamics and rangeland, borderlands studies.
Uttam has a doctorate in Himalayan ecology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and later becoming a founding member of the Department of Geography at Sikkim University and going on to lead the Department. He led the Sikkim University team in the Inter-University Consortium on Cryosphere and Climate Change (IUCCCC) and was recipient of ‘Emerging Scholar-2014’ at India-China Institute, New School, New York.
In 2018 he was Erasmus+ Mobility programme Guest Fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark, and in 2016 he received the Geography Teaching Award from the Deccan Geographical Society of India.
Hunter Marston
Adjunct Research Fellow
Hunter Marston is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the Australian National University in the Coral Bell School of Asia-Pacific Affairs, an Adjunct Research Fellow at La Trobe Asia, and an Associate with 9DashLine. He was a 2021 non-resident WSD-Handa Fellow at the Pacific Forum in Honolulu and the 2019 recipient of a Robert J. Myers Fellows Fund from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Prior to undertaking his PhD, he was a Senior Research Assistant for the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and The India Project at the Brookings Institution.
He previously worked at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Southeast Asia program. He completed his Masters in Southeast Asia Studies and Masters in Public Administration at the University of Washington in 2013. In 2012 Hunter was a Harold Rosenthal Fellow in International Relations in the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar. He writes regularly on Southeast Asian politics and U.S. foreign policy. His work has appeared in Contemporary Southeast Asia, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post.