The Australian Institute of International Affairs was saddened to hear of the death last night of one of its fellows, Professor Rikki Kersten. Along with being a trusted mentor to many Australia-based researchers on Asia, Kersten was a significant figure in the study of modern Japanese politics and also fostered academic ties between the Netherlands and Australia. Educated in Wollongong, Adelaide, and Oxford, Kersten spent ample time during her education at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science and Keio University, among other institutions. Before resuming life as an academic, she worked for five years in the Australian Foreign Service, posted to the Political Section of the Australian Embassy in Tokyo.

Kersten’s research focussed on Japanese political thought. Notably, her graduate work and first book analysed the thinking and influence of Maruyama Masao, Japan’s most influential postwar liberal political philosopher. It remains the quintessential volume on Maruyama originally published in English. Kersten’s early study of Maruyama would guide exploration through her subsequent numerous publications on the political dynamics of the Japanese left. From 2011, she began to focus more intently on Japanese security, in particular, the dynamics of the U.S.-Japan Alliance. She was made an AIIA Fellow in 2022 and was about to embark on an ambitious project on the history of Australia-Japan relations, funded fully by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Kersten was the director of the Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific at the University of Sydney. She was then professor and head of Japanese Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. In 2004 with Professor Axel Schneider, she won a VICI grant, one of the largest and most prestigious grants awarded by the Dutch government, to research Historical Consciousness and the Future in China and Japan. In 2005, she and Schneider founded the Modern East Asia Research Centre, now the Leiden Asia Centre, to promote cutting edge research on the politics and societies of Japan, China, and Korea. She moved back to Australia in 2006, joining the Australian National University as Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific and Dean of the Faculty of Asian Studies.

She nevertheless kept up with her friends at Leiden, promoting ties between Australia and the Netherlands and travelling frequently to Holland. In 2006, she founded the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration focussing on the study of Southeast Asia. AIIA National Executive Director Dr Bryce Wakefield first met Kersten soon after he started working as a lecturer at Leiden in 2012. “Although she had not worked there for some time, Rikki was very well known among the staff of the university,” he recalls. “Rikki has had an outsized influence on many a career. It was through Rikki that I came to know of the AIIA, when she persuaded me to write for Australian Outlook. It is true that had I not met her, I would not be in this position today.”

Indeed, Kersten will be remembered as a mentor to countless students of East Asian affairs and a dear friend to colleagues across the world. According to her former PhD Student, now Head of Research and Associate Professor at the Centre for Future Defence and National Security, Deakin University at the National War College Dr Pichamon Yeophantong, “Not only was Rikki known as an incredibly dedicated scholar of Japan, her generosity and spirit also distinguished her as a compassionate human being. Indeed, Rikki’s legacy speaks to how a person’s greatness lies not with what they have, but in what they give.” Yeophantong, who visited Kersten in hospital several times in recent months, notes that “Rikki lives on in our fond and vibrant memories of her, as well as the enormous impact that she has had on our academic careers—and lives.”

Kersten passed away on the evening of 21 December. She had been in and out of hospital in Canberra, battling cancer and associated symptoms for more than one year. In the final year of her life, she received an outpouring of support from friends across the globe as she kept them updated on her condition. We at the AIIA will miss Rikki. Our thoughts at this time are with her family.