James Ockey is the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia, and will be at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from January through March in 2012. 

He is currently the coordinator of political science at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he is an associate professor (reader). 

Ockey’s research interests cover many aspects of Thai politics, including democratization, civil-military relations, electoral politics, and political conflict. While at Shorenstein APARC he will be working on the manuscript for a book project, tentatively titled Trakun Kanmuang: Family Politics in Thailand. The book will analyze patterns of family relationships in the Thai parliament, outline the role of provincial political families in promoting or inhibiting the democratization process at local and national levels, and explore the place of political families in the social structures of provincial Thailand. 

Ockey earned an MA and PhD in government at Cornell University, and a BA in political science from Brigham Young University.