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Teaching, research supervision (internal and external) and journal editing is entwined with my own research and varied publications. Currently this International Relations IR research deal with the rise-impact of CHINA (with 3 books having ensued on China and the international system in a past-present-future trilogy), and with the rise-impact of INDIA; generating in turn further studies on China-India relations, and on China-EU relations. These are settings in which perceptions and images (IR constructivism) play a key role alongside traditional geopolitics and power processes in the hithertoo Western-dominated international system. Such East-West encounter in the international system is set to remain as a central question for the coming years. These Asia-Pacific IR concerns have led me to becoming the current Managing Editor of the US-based journal Asian Security. They have also led to reviewing articles for journals like Asian Security, Geopolitics, European Journal of International Relations, and Global Change, Peace & Security

Such East-West themes were first encountered by me back in 1974, when I gained my B.A in International Relations (School of African & Asian Studies) at Sussex University. It looked at how International Politics functions in the World in general with particular focus on Asia, and the way in which it can be affected by History, and Comparative Religion. Later, I pursued in a MA in Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster in 1979, which had a deliberate emphasis on Oriental religions and the role of religion in social change. In turn, a Ph.D. was gained from Lancaster in 1983, a wide-ranging religious-political study of the interactions in Central Asia (Bactria) of religious traditions from East and West, from the coming of Alexander the Great to the establishment of Islam. Just under twenty years later, as Western forces marched into Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and take on al-Qaeda, one full circle was reached.

Ph.D and teaching qualifications (PGCE) led to varied Higher Education (e.g. Open University) work in Asian History, and comparative/oriental Religious Studies. Some Open University work in History led to joining Brunel full-time in 1992. At first this was on the Religious Studies programme run by the WLIHE, especially Asian religions and inter-faith issues; but then after 2000 on the History programme, focusing on Asian history and East-West encounters. During that time the 'Clash of Civilisations' thesis burst into the academic world, and into international relations debate.

Subsequent developments took me into the International Relations provision at Brunel by the mid-2000s, with a general focus on Asia-Pacific International Relations (currently undergraduate level-2), which currently feed into modules at undergraduate level-3 and Masters levels on the rise of China, and rise of India in the international system. A creative productive teaching-researching synergy is shown on such modules, and has led to varied publications. Another full circle was reached with the creation of a new module East-West Encounters Across Time, for provision on the new MA Modern World History programme in 2009, a module reflecting Akira Iriye's sense of "international relations as intercultural relations".

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