Dr. Niklas Swanström is Director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy, and one of its co-founders. He is a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (SPI). His main areas of expertise are conflict prevention, conflict management and regional cooperation; Chinese foreign policy and security in Northeast Asia; the Belt and Road Initiative, traditional and non-traditional security threats and its effect on regional and national security as well as negotiations. His focus is mainly on Northeast Asia, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.