Tomoharu Nishino

Dr. Tomoharu Nishino has been the Co-Director of the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania since 2021.  He previously taught in the IR Program from 2004 to 2008, and served as its Acting Associate Director in 2007-2008. He also taught at the Penn-in-Seoul program during the summer of 2008. He left Penn in 2008 to pursue private sector opportunities but returned to the IR Program as Lecturer and Associate Director in 2014.

Prior to arriving at Penn, Dr. Nishino was an Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin from 2000 to 2004.  There, he taught courses in American Foreign Policy, International Political Economy, UN Peacekeeping, International Relations Theory (graduate level), and Introductory and Advanced Statistical Methods (graduate level).

Dr. Nishino's area of expertise includes international security (especially of the Northeast Asia region), international political economy, political economy of energy, game theory, and quantitative data analysis.

In the private sector, Dr. Nishino has had a long career as a strategy and market entry consultant. He was a partner in the firm Twain Associates, advising American Fortune 500 companies with extensive operations in the far east, and Japanese and Korean firms seeking to enter or expand in the North American market. 

A native of Kyoto, Japan, Dr. Nishino came to the United States to pursue his education.  He earned his B.A. in Government from Harvard University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton university.  A licensed commercial pilot and flight instructor, he spends his off-time teaching people to fly, and volunteering as a patient transport pilot for Angel Flight.