James Cotton is Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of New South Wales, ADFA, Canberra. He was a Procter Fellow at Princeton University, and studied at the Beijing Language Institute. He was Australian Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington DC, 2009, and in 2013 was Harold White Fellow, National Library. In 1997 James was a foundation member of the Foreign Minister’s Advisory Council. His latest book is: The Australians at Geneva. Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years (Melbourne University Press, 2022); he is currently working on the official history of DFAT and its forerunners, 1901-1942. James obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics.