Staff
 |
|
Professional Background
Carl Thayer was educated at Brown University in the United States. He holds an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Yale and a PhD in International Relations from The Australian National University (ANU). He studied Vietnamese language at Yale, Cornell and Southern Illinois University, Thai language at The University of Missouri at Columbia, and Lao language at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Before embarking on an academic career, Carl served in Vietnam with the International Voluntary Services (1967-68) and as a volunteer teacher in Botswana with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. He began his professional career in 1976 as lecturer at the Bendigo Institute of Technology (renamed the Bendigo College of Advanced Education). In 1979, he joined The University of New South Wales and taught first in its Faculty of Military Studies at The Royal Military College-Duntoon (1979-85) and then at University College, ADFA (1986-present). He served as Head of the School of Politics from 1995-97. In 1998, he was promoted to full Professor.
Carl has served three major periods away from University College. From 1992-95, he was seconded to the Regime Change and Regime Maintenance Project, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU. From 1999-2001, he was granted ‘leave in the national interest’ to take up the position of Professor of Southeast Asian Security Studies and Deputy Chair of the Department of Regional Studies at the U.S. Defense Department’s Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. From 2002 to 2004, he was seconded to Deakin University as On Site Academic Co-ordinator of the Defence and Strategic Studies Course, the senior course, at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies (CDSS), Australian Defence College, Weston Creek.
Professor Thayer has spent special study leave at the ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre; Harvard’s Center for International Affairs; International Institute of Strategic Studies in London; Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand; Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore; and the Department of Political Science at Yale. In 2005, he was the C. V. Starr Distinguished Visiting Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. During 2006-07 Carl directed the Regional Security Studies module at the Australian Command and Staff College, Weston Creek. In 2008, he spent the first half of the year as the inaugural Frances M. and Stephen H. Fuller Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Center of Southeast Asian Studies, Ohio University in the United States and the second half of the year as Visiting Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU.
Courses Taught
Civil-Military Relations in the Asia-Pacific
Comparative Politics of Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia: Issues in Security Cooperation
Research Interests / Projects
- Politics of Vietnam (leadership and generational change; decision-making in the Vietnam Communist Party; elections, legal reform and the role of the National Assembly; political reform and dissent, the emergence of civil society, human rights and religious freedom; treatment of ethnic minorities, political legitimacy).
- The role of the military in Vietnam (leadership; defence diplomacy and external relations; arms procurement and force modernisation; domestic commercial and socio-economic roles).
- Foreign Policy of Vietnam (especially Sino-Vietnamese relations, relations with the United States and relations with ASEAN).
- Political terrorism in Southeast Asia (methodological approaches, regional counter-terrorism responses, and U.S. leadership in the war on terrorism).
- Multilateral security institutions in the Asia-Pacific (ASEAN, ASEAN Regional Forum, and the Five Power Defence Arrangements).
- China’s defence cooperation with Southeast Asia.
- Climate change and its impact on Southeast Asian security
Publications
Professor Thayer is the author of over 380 publications including:
Vietnam People’s Army: Development and Modernization. Research Monograph. Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam: Sultan Haji Bolkiah Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2009.
Leadership Dynamics in Terrorist Organisations in Southeast Asia, Leadership Papers No. 3. Canberra: Centre for Defence Leadership Studies, Australian Defence College, 2005.
Regional Outlook Forum 2005: Political Outlook for Malaysia, Myanmar and Vietnam, Trends in Southeast Asia Series 2(2005). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005 (with Khairy Jamaluddin and Robert H. Taylor).
Security, Political Terrorism and Militant Islam in Southeast Asia, Trends in Southeast Asia Series 7(2003). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003 (with Mhd. Shafie Apdal).
Force Modernization in Southeast Asia and Its Implications for the Security of the Asia Pacific, NDCP Occasional Paper, 3(1). Camp General Emilio Aguinaldo, Quezon City: Republic of the Philippines, Department of National Defense, National Defense College of the Philippines, 2000.
Multilateral Institutions in Asia: The ASEAN Regional Forum. Honolulu: Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, 2000.
eds., Vietnamese Foreign Policy in Transition. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999 (with Ramses Amer).
Cambodia and Regional Stability: ASEAN and Constructive Engagement. The CICP Distinguished Lecture Series Report no. 14. Phnom Penh: Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, 1998.
eds., Bringing Democracy to Cambodia: Peacekeeping and Elections. Canberra: Regime Change and Regime Maintenance in Asia and the Pacific Project, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University and Australian Defence Studies Centre, 1996 (with Verberto Selochan).
Beyond Indochina, Adelphi Paper 297. London: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995.
eds., A Crisis of Expectations: UN Peacekeeping in the 1990s. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995 (with Ramesh Thakur).
The Vietnam People’s Army Under Doi Moi. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1994.
Soviet Relations with India and Vietnam, 1945-1992. Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras: Oxford University Press, 1993 (with Ramesh Thakur).
eds., Vietnam and the Rule of Law. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, 1993 (with David G. Marr).
eds., Reshaping Regional Relations: Asia-Pacific and the Former Soviet Union. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993 (with Ramesh Thakur).
Vietnam. Asia-Australia Briefing Papers. Sydney: The Asia-Australia Institute, The University of New South Wales, 1992.
Soviet Relations with India and Vietnam. London: The Macmillan Press and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992 (with Ramesh Thakur).
Trends and Strains: Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Japan. New Delhi: Continental Publishing House for The International Institute for Asia Pacific Studies, 1990 (with Joseph A. Camilleri et al.).
War By Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam, 1954-1960. Sydney and Wellington: Allen & Unwin and Boston and London: Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1989.
eds., The Soviet Union as an Asian Pacific Power: Implications of Gorbachev’s 1986 Vladivostok Initiative. Special Studies in International Security, Boulder and London: Westview Press and South Melbourne: Macmillan Australia, 1987 (with Ramesh Thakur).
Vietnam Since 1975. CSAAR Research Paper no. 20. Brisbane: Centre for the Study of Australian-Asian Relations, Griffith University, August 1982 (with David G. Marr).
Areas of Potential Postgraduate Supervision
- Vietnamese domestic politics, defence and national security, and foreign policy
- Southeast Asia, domestic politics, civil-military relations, foreign policy, maritime security
- ASEAN, ASEAN Regional Forum, foreign policy, international relations, defence and security issues
- Political violence and terrorism, counter-terrorism