Makiko Miyazaki ’20

Makiko is a senior majoring in Political Science (International Relations) with specific interests in domestic sources of state behavior, threat perception, and contemporary history.

Her thesis examines whether the British policymaking elites’ threat perception of the Soviet Union vis-à-vis Nazi Germany in the 1930s led Britain to exclude the Soviet Union in the 1938 Munich Agreement. During the year 2018-19, Makiko served on the Executive Committee for implementing the Japan-America Student Conference (JASC); since 1934, JASC has provided an annual forum for 70 graduate/undergraduate students from both countries to examine challenges in U.S.-Japan relations and has produced alumni including Henry Kissinger and Japan’s former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. She has interned at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (think-tank associated with Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs), worked at the U.S.-Japan Council (NGO promoting U.S.-Japan relations), and been published in Wellesley’s International Relations Council Journal, Wellesley Globalist, and Japan’s national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. Besides Wellesley, Makiko has studied at the University of Oxford (2018-19) and Harvard University (2019) to gain insight into International Relations, European/British politics, and political/moral philosophy. Makiko has lived in four countries (Japan, Switzerland, the U.S., and the UK), is fluent in Japanese and English, and has a working knowledge of French and Mandarin Chinese. Upon graduation, Makiko hopes to earn a Master’s Degree in International Relations and to strengthen U.S.-Japan and UK-Japan relations through policymaking and diplomacy.