Professional Affiliation

Assistant Professor, Global Studies Department, Bentley University

Expert Bio

Pon Souvannaseng researches the political economy of energy infrastructure projects in East and Southeast Asia. She is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at Bentley University. A political economist by training, she holds a PhD from the London School of Economics & Political Science. She has conducted Fulbright and UKRI-funded research looking at the political economy of private and public sector investment in energy projects and energy transitions in East and Southeast Asia.  She is motivated by a deep concern for environmental governance and disaster mitigation in the Mekong region and is interested in building stronger corporate regulation and multilateral consensus around these issues.  She is a Mansfield Foundation-Luce Asia Policy Scholar and also an American Political Science Association Asia Fellow.  She has been a non-resident Visiting Research Fellow at the East-West Center Washington D.C. Pon has previously served as a researcher at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, ASEAN Labour Secretariat and as a Fellow in Political Economy & International Development at University College London and Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Manchester Centre for Crisis Studies & Mitigation.