Hasta Colman

Hasta Colman is a Predoctoral Fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). During the 2025–2026 academic year, she was an America in the World Consortium Predoctoral Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security and the Asia Policy Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Her research lies at the intersection of Chinese politics and international security, with a particular focus on non-traditional security, China’s internal security apparatus, and regional security cooperation across Southeast, South, and Central Asia. Her dissertation examines China’s use of internal security forces in joint efforts with neighboring states to address non-traditional, internal, and transnational security concerns.

Hasta has conducted fieldwork in China and nine other countries in Asia. She was previously a visiting PhD Fellow at Nanjing University, a National Bureau of Asian Research Chinese Language Fellow at National Taiwan University’s International Chinese Language Program (ICLP), a Fudan Fellow at Fudan University, and a Chinese language student at the Inter-University Program (IUP) at Tsinghua University. She holds an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.