Ford School professor John Ciorciari has been named dean of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, effective March 2024 (subject to approval by the IU Board of Trustees).
“John has been a treasured scholar, teacher, mentor, administrator, and friend here at the Ford School,” said Dean Celeste Watkins-Hayes. “Now, he will make a very fine dean, and our loss is very much to the gain of Indiana University and the students, faculty, and staff of the Hamilton Lugar School.”
Ciorciari joined the Ford School faculty as an assistant professor in 2009, earned tenure in 2016, and became a full professor in 2022. Along the way, he led a transformation and tremendous expansion of international education opportunities at Michigan. Due in large part to his dedication and creativity, the Ford School is now recognized as a top-ranked graduate program for international and global policy.
Cioriciari served as director of the Ford School’s International Policy Center for nine years, and was the founding director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center, which launched in 2018. He created and led the Ford School’s international policy concentration for MPP students, and has been a beloved teacher and mentor for undergraduates and graduates alike. He served as associate dean for research and policy engagement in 2022, and that same year, he chaired the U-M’s search for dean of the Ford School.
Ciorciari is widely recognized as a leading scholar of Southeast Asian politics, fragile states, international law and security, and global governance. He is the author of Sovereignty Sharing in Fragile States (Stanford University Press, 2021) and co-editor with Kiyoteru Tsutsui of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, 2021). He is also the author of The Limits of Alignment: Southeast Asia and the Great Powers since 1975 (Georgetown University Press, 2010) and co-author with Anne Heindel of Hybrid Justice: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (University of Michigan Press, 2014). Ciorciari has been an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, an Asia Society Fellow, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, a policy official in the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of International Affairs, and an associate at the international law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Later this year, the Ford School will launch a search for a senior scholar in international affairs.